Colombia leader in rift-healing visit to Venezuela after nine-year pause

Colombia's Gustavo Petro on Tuesday met with his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, in the first talks at presidential level since the neighbours re-established diplomatic ties after a three-year break.

The meeting in Caracas of the two leftist leaders marked a watershed warming between the once-estranged nations.

Petro, a former M-19 leftist insurgent who was sworn in as Colombia's first leftist president in August, called for Venezuela to be brought back into a regional trade alliance and a human rights system.

"We want to invite Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru to accept the reintegration of Venezuela in the Andean Community as a member with full powers," Petro said after meeting Maduro at the Miraflores Palace.

Venezuela left the regional trade bloc in 2006.

Petro also called for Venezuela to be pulled back into the human rights convention of the Organisation of American States, a hemispheric alliance. Maduro said he was "very receptive" to the idea.

Venezuela severed diplomatic relations in 2019 after increasingly strained ties with Petro's predecessors Juan Manuel Santos and conservative Iván Duque – who Maduro even accused of orchestrating plans to assassinate him.

The final straw came when Duque backed Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó – recognised by dozens of countries as the victor in 2018 elections claimed by Maduro.

It was the first visit by a Colombian president to Venezuela's capital since 2013.

Visit could 'normalise' violations

Since Petro succeeded Duque in August, Colombia's first ever left-wing president has moved to mend relations with Venezuela's populist leftist government.

Caracas and Bogotá formally re-established diplomatic relations on August 29 by sending ambassadors to each other's capitals.

Guaidó on Tuesday criticised Petro's decision "to visit the dictator Maduro... and to call him 'president'."

It was an "action that could dangerously normalise human rights violations... and the worst migration crisis in the world," he wrote on Twitter.

More than seven million Venezuelans have left their country since 2014, according to the United Nations.

Some 2.5 million find themselves in Colombia, as part of an open-door policy followed under Duque, in support of Guaidó.

Maduro, after the talks, called for "new steps toward a total opening" of the two neighbours' shared 2,200-kilometre (1,370-mile) border, a frontier that has been infested with armed groups fighting over lucrative drug resources and routes.

In September, Colombia and Venezuela reopened the border to vehicles transporting goods – considered the first step toward resuming commercial relations worth about US$7.2 billion in 2008 but only US$400 million last year.

A string of recent leftist victories in South America meanwhile appear to have placed Maduro in a stronger position.

On Monday he said he had spoken to Brazil's president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to "resume the binational agenda of cooperation" all but paralysed under the government of far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine – and the pressure it placed on global energy supplies – also brought about behind-the-scenes efforts by the United States to engineer at least a minimal warming with Venezuela, a major oil producer.