( dpa ) - Colombian President Alvaro Uribe set aside his differences with Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to exchange smiles and handshakes Friday at the end of the Rio Group summit.
Lengthy diatribes by Uribe and Correa in particular laid out their bitter disagreements over a Colombian cross-border airstrike against a rebel base last week on Ecuadorian territory.
However, at the request of Dominican President Leonel Fernandez, the summit host, the three Andean leaders approached each other at the end of the summit in a move that visibly opened the door to overcoming this week's serious tensions.