Playa del Carmen, Mexico. - Dominican Republic president Leonel Fernandez will head the “Group of Friends of Venezuela and Colombia” to mediate in the ongoing dispute between those two nations, which flared up again in the Summit of Unity, concluded today in the country’s Yucatan peninsula.

It’s the third time the leader of the Caribbean nation is called to help settle tiffs between Uribe and Chavez, the second time in 1998 and included Ecuador’s Rafael Correa.

The host, Mexico chief executive Felipe Calderón told the press that Fernandez will head the group of countries to help solve the differences between Colombia and Venezuela, whose presidents Alvaro Uribe and Hugo Chavez again traded jabs in a luncheon Monday.

Uribe’s comparison of the way trade Caracas treats Colombian companies with the U.S. blockade on Cuba prompted Chávez to threaten with abandoning the event, to which the Colombian leader retorted: "Be a man and stay and we’ll speak here face to face, because you sometimes insult from a distance."

Latin America, Caribbean bloc

Also approved in the Summit by the leaders was the formation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, “as our proper regional space which joins all states."

Calderón said the new organism will assume the “patrimony" of the Rio Group and of the Latin America and Caribbean Summit (CALC).