BOGOTA – Colombia and Ecuador on Friday named charges d’affaires in their respective capitals, a step towards renewing diplomatic relations ruptured since Bogota’s March 2008 attack on a Colombian rebel camp in Ecuadorian territory.

The Colombian Foreign Ministry said in a communique that Ricardo Montenegro, current director of the Office of Territorial Sovereignty and Border Development, will occupy that post in Ecuador, which in turn named Andres Teran as charge d’affaires in Colombia.

Colombia’s foreign minister, Jaime Bermudez, currently on a state visit to Singapore, confirmed on Bogota radio outlets the designation of Montenegro, a journalist by profession.

Quito broke off diplomatic relations with Bogota in March 2008 after the Colombian military bombed a FARC encampment in Ecuadorian territory.

Killed in the raid was Raul Reyes, second-in-command of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and another 25 people, including an Ecuadorian national and several Mexican college students.

In recent weeks the two governments have shown their readiness to re-establish relations and have taken concrete steps to do so as part of a plan that Bermudez and his Ecuadorian counterpart Fander Falconi agreed upon at the end of September in New York.

Bermudez said Friday that both countries continue working on the “sensitive issues” with the aid of the Organization of American States, or OAS, and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s Atlanta-based center, but was unwilling to conjecture on when the re-establishment of full bilateral relations might occur.

Ricardo Montenegro “will be well received” in Ecuador. “We’re going to work on a positive agenda in benefit of our people,” Falconi for his part said on Bogota’s Caracol Radio. EFE