Maduro hosts Colombia's Petro for 'very fruitful' talks

The two leaders held talks for about three hours in Caracas at the Miraflores presidential palace, where Mr. Petro - Colombia’s first leftist president - arrived around midday

Colombia's President Gustavo Petro made a surprise trip to meet his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro on Saturday - their second face-to-face after the thawing of a years-long diplomatic freeze.

The two leaders held talks for about three hours in Caracas at the Miraflores presidential palace, where Mr. Petro - Colombia's first leftist president - arrived around midday.

The summit came just days after the final reopening of the South American neighbors' shared border, closed in a spat over Maduro's disputed 2018 reelection.

Since taking office in August, Mr. Petro's government has worked to mend diplomatic ties with Caracas.

Venezuela has also served as a key facilitator for Mr. Petro as he seeks to fulfill a campaign promise of establishing "total peace" with the armed groups still active in Colombia, some of which operate along the two countries' porous border.

At the end of 2022, Mr. Petro seemed to have made major progress on that front, announcing a bilateral ceasefire with five armed groups that would last from January 1 to June 30.

But one of the groups, the ELN, said just three days later that it had not entered into any such deal, and the government conceded later that nothing had been signed.