Colombia and Venezuela sign 16 bilateral cooperation agreements

[naaman fletcher]

Xinhua: Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez signed on Sunday a series of cooperation agreements to strengthen bilateral relations.

"It was a very productive meeting ... We signed 16 agreements that deal with infrastructure projects, such as construction of pipelines, oil pipelines and roads," Santos said.

For his part, Chavez pledged to promote the bilateral trade, which was crippled in 2009 when Venezuela suspended commercial relations with Colombia during the regime of then President Alvaro Uribe.

"Today we have pledged to increase trade, (and) this is a short-term goal ... In addition, (we pledged) to achieve progress in the joint production of goods and services," Chavez said.

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