FOOT traffic across the Venezuela-Colombia border is set to resume fully today for the first time in a year.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his Colombian counterpart Juan Manuel Santos agreed on Thursday to reopen pedestrian border crossings that had been closed for a year following attacks by smugglers.

They reached the deal at talks in the eastern Venezuelan town of Puerto Ordaz.

Mr Maduro said he hoped the accord would lead to a “new frontier of peace” and “a new beginning for economic and trade relations.”

Five pedestrian crossings will open for 15 hours a day from today.

“What we are going to do is open the border gradually,” Mr Santos told reporters. It will be a temporary opening schedule while we learn and adapt to the decisions, so that each step we take will be accurate and positive.”

Negotiations are set to continue on reopening road crossings and combating smuggling, the drug trade and other criminal activities.

Smuggling of state-subsidised Venezuelan food and fuel to Colombia was rife before the closure. Mr Santos said the two governments were discussing the possibility of Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA opening petrol stations on the Colombian side of the border to undercut the smugglers.

Jose Vielma Mora, governor of Venezuela’s Tachira state, said the two countries would fight crime along their common border. They will also negotiate an identification mechanism for their citizens.

Mr Maduro ordered the border crossing closures and a crackdown on criminal gangs last August after three soldiers patrolling the frontier were wounded in an ambush by smugglers.

Following the closures, traffic fell from 100,000 people a day to just 3,000 individuals with special permits, including pupils attending school in Colombia and chronically ill patients.

Venezuela is host to some five million refugees from Colombia’s 50-year civil war, which is now coming to an end following a landmark deal between Mr Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia left-wing guerilla group.

Venezuela says far-right Colombian paramilitaries made redundant by the peace accord have come to Venezuela, where they run organised crime and work as hired thugs for the anti-socialist opposition.