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Venezuela to snub Colombia in car purchase
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| Published on Thursday, August 13, 2009 | Email To Friend Print Version
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CARACAS, Venezuela (AFP) -- Venezuela has said it will purchase up to 10,000 vehicles from Argentina, making good on a threat to scuttle trade with Colombia in favor of other trade partners.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had agreed to import 10,000 vehicles from Colombia in April during a meeting with conservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
But Chavez last week nullified that deal in response to charges leveled by Bogota that Caracas was supplying weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a leftist guerrilla group.
The new trade deal forged by Caracas and Buenos Aires on Tuesday will increase its food imports from Argentina, said Chavez, who has said that he would seek business with "governments that are true allies, friends, not hidden daggers."
That accord, valued at more than one billion dollars, also will see trade increases in textiles, shoes, automobiles and other areas.
In the past two years, Colombia reduced its auto exports to Venezuela from 45,000 units in 2007, and to a mere 15,000 in 2008.
In July, Bogota said that it had captured weapons from Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebel group, Latin America's oldest and largest insurgency -- weapons allegedly produced in Sweden and sold to Venezuela.
An indignant Chavez responded by declaring that his country would suspend Colombian imports to his country, which official figures show totaled 2.62 billion dollars in the first half of 2009.
Chavez also railed against plans to open seven military bases in Colombia to US forces, which he said could be used for an incursion against Colombia's neighbors.
Colombia and the United States have insisted the bases are meant only to expand the US fight against drug trafficking in Colombia. | | | | Reads : 483 | | | |
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