South America's simmering regional conflict has de-esclated as leaders toned down rhetoric and Colombia and Venezuela restored diplomatic ties.

Over the weekend, Venezuela reopened its Colombian embassy in a move that – perhaps superficially – reconciled a border dispute, reports the International Herald Tribune.

Talk of war has faded in the Andes in a matter of days, the product of a diplomatic truce between Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador that allowed the leaders of all three to avoid a protracted conflict while also saving face.

President Hugo Chavez's government announced Sunday it is restoring full diplomatic ties with Colombia and reopening its embassy in Bogota after smoothing over a crisis sparked by Colombia's cross-border attack on a rebel base in Ecuador. Venezuela also invited back Colombian diplomats expelled by Chavez last week.

Colombia, a close US ally, and Venezuela, a rival of Washington, have been locked in a bitter dispute since March 1, when Colombian troops attacked a training camp inside Ecuador suspected to be used by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Colombian guerrilla group. Colombia claimed the strike was justified because it resulted in the death of a FARC leader. But President Hugo Chávez, who has sympathized with FARC rebels, viewed the strike as a violation of Ecuadorean sovereignty, the Associated Press reports.

The [FARC] rebels have expressed an ideological affinity for the leftist Chavez…

Following Colombia's raid on the FARC camp March 1, Chavez quickly rose to the defense of [Ecuador's president, Rafael] Correa, one of several leftist presidents to rise to power as U.S. influence in the region wanes.

Tensions flared when Venezuela expelled the Colombian ambassador and moved troops to the border with Colombia, Reuters reported.

At issue was more than just the cross-border raid, Time reports.

The escalating crisis between Colombia and its neighbors is more than just a case of Andean road rage. It exposes volatile political fault lines not seen in the Americas in a generation. On one side stand President Bush and regional allies led by conservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, whose army is accused of invading Ecuador last weekend to kill a Marxist guerrilla boss. Against them stand Venezuela's left-wing President Hugo Chavez, whom Uribe accuses of sponsoring those rebels, and friends such as Ecuador's President Rafael Correa.

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