Colombia on Wednesday questioned Venezuela's choice to shut their shared border in an effort to reduce smuggling of heavily subsidized fuel and food. Venezuela started closing the border into Columbia on Monday between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. to prevent lucrative cross-border trade, but Colombia said a joint military operation covering the 2,219 kilometers of shared border would have been a better move. "This is a unilateral decision by Venezuela's government," Colombia's Foreign Minister Maria Holguin told reporters. "We don't believe that closing the border will control contraband." Since July, the Venezuelan government impounded 21,000 tons of goods and 40 million liters of gasoline that smugglers attempted to resell at a high profit in Colombia.
