COCHABAMBA, Bolivia, July 28.— Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro announced that his country is to propose a peace plan for Colombia and the easing of tensions in South America during the meeting of foreign ministers of the South American Union of Nations (UNASUR), scheduled for this Thursday in Quito, after his meeting yesterday with Bolivian President Evo Morales in Cochabamba.

"Enough of war. The Colombian war serves to increase imperialist interventionism in our continent, violence, and threats against the peoples’ processes of peaceful transformation," he stated, according to ABI.

The foreign minister emphasized that Colombia "had mounted a political show to destroy any possibility of opening up an approach to dialogue with the next government in order to overcome problems."

"We hope that tomorrow’s meeting (today) of UNASUR will allow us to begin channeling this collection of proposals and guarantee that South America is a zone of peace, product of the political will of our peoples," affirmed Maduro.

For his part, Evo recalled the divisive attitude of the Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe, given that to date, every time that an integration attempt has been made among presidents of the region, he has tried to boycott it.

In that context, he referred to Uribe’s attitude at the Latin America summit in Cancún last February – which took place without the presence of the United States – when he personally offended Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan head of state.

The Bolivian president reiterated that UNASUR is the appropriate organization to attempt to solve the Colombian-Venezuelan conflict and rejected the offer of mediation by the Organization of American States (OAS), which he described as "an instrument of U.S. imperialism", PL notes.

Maduro arrived in Boliva from Lima, where he met with his Peruvian counterpart José García Belaunde and explained the position of his country, which is aimed at overcoming the tension provoked by what he described as the political and economic aggression of the outgoing Colombian government.

In his lightning tour of South America to discuss the dispute with the neighboring nations, Maduro also visited Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile.