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Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro has agreed with US President Donald Trump to take “joint action” against cocaine-smuggling guerrillas at the Venezuelan border, the interior minister in Bogotá announced Thursday.
The two leaders held their first telephone conversation on Wednesday, easing tensions after President Trump threatened military action against Colombia after Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro was ousted by the U.S. military.
Interior Minister Armando Benedetti said in an interview on Blue Radio that President Trump and President Petro were “committed to taking joint action” against Colombia’s last remaining major armed opposition group, the National Liberation Army (ELN).
Colombia accuses the ELN of launching attacks and kidnappings against Colombian soldiers and retreating to rear bases in Venezuela.
Benedetti said Petro asked Trump to cooperate in a “violent attack on the ELN on the border” with Venezuela.
He said guerrillas must be “attacked from the rear” as well as from mainland Colombia.
Colombia and Venezuela share a porous 2,200km border, where various armed groups fight for control of profits from drug trafficking, illegal mining and smuggling.
After taking power in 2022, Petro tried to negotiate peace with the ELN, but the efforts stalled.
He accepted President Trump’s invitation to meet in Washington despite a heated exchange in recent days in which Trump branded Petro a drug trafficker and the Colombian leader vowed to take up arms against any U.S. attack.
Trump told Petro to “watch out for his SS” after Petro criticized the US for seizing President Maduro in Caracas during a nighttime raid on January 3.
President Trump accused Petro of being a “sick man who likes to make cocaine and sell it to the United States.”
Washington and Bogota have enjoyed decades of security cooperation, but relations have deteriorated since President Trump began his second term last January.
In November, Petro ordered its security forces to stop sharing intelligence with the United States unless the Trump administration halted attacks on suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean.
In a message to X, Petro wrote that the Colombian military must immediately cancel “communications and other agreements with the US security services.”
Additional sources of information • AFP
