Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, left, waves while accompanied by Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe at the Hato Grande presidential farm near Bogota

BOGOTA: A shouting match between Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has led to the creation of a new mechanism for airing issues between the hostile neighbours, officials said on Tuesday.

President Chavez nearly stormed out of a summit in Cancun, Mexico on Monday during a private meeting with heads of state after president Uribe told him to “be a man” and face the music, officials said.

“This was a profound debate, a strongly-worded argument,” Colombian Foreign Minister Jaime Bermudez said on Tuesday in comments aired on Colombian radio stations.

But Bermudez said it led to the establishment of a mechanism “for direct discussions, with the help of various countries, in which important, fundamental issues will be discussed.”

Simmering tensions between the two countries have sharpened since Colombia signed an agreement with Washington last year granting the US military access to bases on its territory for counter-drug and counter-insurgency operations.

Charging that it was the target of the deal, Venezuela retaliated by freezing ties with Colombia.

During Monday’s meeting, Uribe complained to Chavez that Venezuela has imposed a trade embargo on Colombia, upsetting the Venezuelan president, a Colombian diplomat told AFP by phone, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Chavez then accused Uribe of planning his assassination by a paramilitary squad and threatened to walk out of the summit in disgust, he said.