October 12, 2007 (LPAC)--Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez inaugurated today the 225 km pipeline that joins both countries delivering 150 million cf of gas from Colombia to Venezuela during the next 5 years, and after that will send 200 million cf from Venezuela to Colombia. This is the first stage of a larger Trans-Caribbean Pipeline that will extend into Panama and Ecuador. During the event, President Uribe announced that Colombia is joining the Banco del Sur, explaining that this was not meant as a rejection of the World Bank or the Inter-American Developement Bank, "but an expression of solidarity, of loyalty with the brotherhood of Latin-America to which we are not going to fail."

Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa, invited to the event, said that this integration shows that "there's more that joins us than separates us," and the next step will be the inauguration of the Bank of the South, now including Colombia besides Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela. Within this process, Correa said in his speech, "we are seeking to forget an old view that sought to create great markets not great nations, that sought great consumers but not great citizens."