Friday, August 13, 2010

Colombia Makes Nice with Venezuela & FARC

Three weeks ago, I thought Hugo Chavez was prepared to go to war with Colombia.

But Colombia's newly elected President, Juan Manuel Santos, sought out a meeting with Chavez as his first act of office and the two countries have restored diplomatic ties that were severed by Chavez.

It worries me that Santos was so eager to get an audience with Chavez. It also worries me that he is "open" to talks with FARC. It further worries me that they appear to have responded by detonating a car bomb in Bogota. Fortunately, there were no fatalities.

Of course, the underlying tension between Chavez and Santos' predecessor Alvaro Uribe was that Chavez was harboring FARC in Venezuela. Santos might be well intentioned in trying to alleviate this tension but what reason have either Chavez or FARC given Santos to trust them other than their words?

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