Lula intends to arrange a meeting between Chávez and Uribe

[spanza]

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that he aims to arrange a meeting between his Colombian and Venezuelan counterparts to settle their differences, the Brazilian newspaper Valor reported.

The Brazilian Head of State lamented that his US counterpart Barack Obama forgot about Latin America after having promised a renewed relationship.

Lula criticized the agreement that allows US military to use Colombian bases and requested President Uribe to give assurances that the operations will be limited to the Colombian territory.

On the alleged concerns of the United States about President Hugo Chávez, Lula said that there is a mutual mistrust.

"I do not know whether Americans should be concerned about Chávez or Chávez about Americans," he said.

As for the differences between Venezuela and Colombia and the alleged threats by Chávez to close the border and eliminate bilateral trade with its neighboring country, Lula said that nobody can make politics out of newspaper headlines.

He said that the economies of Colombia and Venezuela are complementary.

Lula said that he trusts that Chávez will get on well with Colombian President Álvaro Uribe and that he intends to arrange a meeting between the two leaders on November 26, in the Brazilian city of Manaus.

The Brazilian President has invited the leaders of the Amazon countries to visit Manaus in order to hold a summit where Presidents will adopt joint positions ahead of the Climate Conference to be held next December in Copenhagen.

He recalled that he recently had dinner with Chávez and had a luncheon with Uribe. Lula said that he will manage to sit the two leaders together on the same day in Manaus.

http://english.eluniversal.com/2009/11/06/en_pol_esp_lula-intends-to-arra_06A3011533.shtml

[Braulio]

1. I don't think it'll work

There's a fundamental difference between the two. Uribe is focused on getting rid of the FARC and ELN via military means, and he seems to be winning on that front. He sees the US deal as a means to obtain much higher quality intelligence over the battlefield, and the deal is signed.

Meanwhile, Chavez has been backing the FARC and ELN, and is interested in having a cold-war type conflict with Colombia - which he'll push but won't take all the way to a military conflict, because he knows he can't win it (Colombia has a much larger population base, and is backed by the US giant, war would be a disaster for Venezuela, and Chavez knows it).

Another issue putting the brakes on Chavez is the reality that Venezuela imports food, manufactured goods, natural gas AND electric power from Colombia. The Venezuelan economy would really suffer if those supplies are cut off. Uribe, on the other hand, is defeating the FARC and ELN, slowly but surely - at least insofar as they're gradually seeing their numbers eroded and their leadership is being killed off one by one. The problem with Uribe's approach is the likelyhood that FARC will then morph into a much smaller, virulent urban terrorist group.

The US, for its part, has to deal with its demand for drugs, because if the drugs being produced in FARC territory are curtailed, a source will pop up elsewhere. The money's just too good. A good step to begin to curtail the drug trade would be to legalize drugs such as marihuana, thus allowing drug interdiction to focus on harder drugs.