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June 11, 2008 at 7:44 AM EDT

Hugo Chavez, the demagogic and semi-tyrannical President of Venezuela,
unexpectedly on Sunday urged FARC, Colombia's Marxist-Leninist rebels,
to give up guerrilla warfare and liberate the hostages they hold - as
it happens, a day after a rather more peaceable figure, David Emerson,
Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade,
announced that free trade negotiations between Canada and Colombia had
been successfully completed.

Some Canadians have objected to these negotiations with criticisms of
Colombia's human-rights record and environmental standards, and there
may yet be difficulty in passing the legislation required to implement
the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement. But now that FARC seems to
be imploding, raising real hope of an end to a long civil war,
political repression in Colombia should cease to be an issue.

Though Mr. Chavez's new course may well be motivated by the
embarrassing emergence of evidence that he may have been deeply
involved in helping FARC, this change nonetheless confirms the success
of the government of President Alvaro Uribe in bringing comparative
peace to Colombia.

Meanwhile, in Washington, a U.S.-Colombia free-trade agreement has
stalled in Congress, during the final, languishing months of the Bush
administration. Canada is wisely taking the initiative to pursue trade
and investment opportunities in Latin America, specifically with
Colombia and Peru; Michelle Bachelet, the President of Chile, visited
Ottawa this week, too.

The text of the Canada-Colombia treaty - let alone the implementing
bill - has not yet been made public, but it is to be hoped that the
opposition parties will consider this trade agreement fairly. Even
during a minority government, our Parliament, compared to a Congress
where special interests are often vigorously represented, may give us
something of a comparative economic advantage.





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