(AFP) – Colombia on Monday recalled its ambassador to the United States as a public feud between the nations’ leaders heated up with President Donald Trump revoking aid and threatening punishing tariffs, or more. Trump on Sunday vowed to end all aid to the South American nation — a historically close US partner and the world’s leading cocaine producer — berating his leftist counterpart Gustavo Petro as an “illegal drug leader.” He also said he would announce new tariffs on Monday targeting Colombia, and threatened unspecified action to “close up” drug cultivation in the country if Petro failed to act.
Colombia’s foreign ministry announced Monday that Ambassador Daniel Garcia Pena had returned from Washington to Bogota for consultation, while Interior Minister Armando Benedetti called Trump’s remarks on forcibly ending drug cultivation a “threat of invasion or military action against Colombia.” Petro and Trump have feuded since the US leader returned to power in January, but their public conflict has intensified in recent weeks over the Republican president’s deadly anti-drug campaign in the Caribbean.
Washington has deployed warships off the South American coast since August and has carried out strikes against at least seven boats it said were running drugs that would ultimately end up in the United States. At least 32 people have been killed so far, according to Trump’s administration, which has released no details to back up its claims. Experts say such summary killings are illegal even if they target confirmed narcotics traffickers. The campaign has mainly focused on drug trafficking from Venezuela, though attention has turned toward Colombia in recent days.
On Sunday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said three people had been killed on an alleged drug-running vessel affiliated with a Colombian armed group, the National Liberation Army (ELN). That strike came on the heels of another attack — on a semi-submersible vessel — that left two survivors, one of whom was Colombian. Petro has accused Trump of murder and of violating Colombia’s sovereignty. In an interview Monday night with Univision, Petro said he trusted other US democratic institutions to “put science and truth above slander, arrogance and greed.” Trump, he said, “does not like free men because he wants to be king.”
Until now, Colombia has received more US aid than any other country in South America — $740 million in 2023, according to US government figures. Half of this went to fighting drug trafficking. Relations between two historic allies are at their lowest point in decades. Last month, Washington announced it had decertified Colombia as an ally in the fight against drugs. Colombia hit back by halting arms purchases from the United States, its biggest military partner.
In late September, the United States revoked Petro’s US visa after he gave a speech at a pro-Palestinian street rally in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. Since coming to power in 2022, leftist Petro has championed a paradigm shift in the US-led war on drugs, away from forced eradication to focus on the social problems that fuel drug trafficking. Under his watch, cultivation of coca, the raw material of cocaine, has increased by about 70 percent, according to the Colombian government and United Nations estimates.
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