Trump invites Colombian Petro to the White House after threats | News

US President Donald Trump invited Colombian leader Gustavo Petro to the White House, days after accusing him of cocaine trafficking and threatening military action against his government.

Wednesday’s sudden detente followed an hour-long phone call between Trump and Petro, during which the two leaders discussed “the drug situation” and “other disagreements,” according to the US president.

Recommended Stories

list of 4 elementsend of list

It was their first call since Trump threatened a military operation in Colombia following the United States’ kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a brazen attack on Caracas on Saturday. These warnings prompted Petro to call on Colombians to take to the streets to defend their sovereignty.

“It was a great honor to speak with the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, who called to explain the drug situation and other disagreements we have had,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

“I appreciated his appeal and his tone and look forward to meeting him in the near future.”

Trump added that “arrangements are being made” for a meeting in Washington between him and Petro, but gave no specific date for a meeting.

Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president, addressed demonstrators who responded to his call to demonstrate in Bogota’s Plaza Bolivar, following the call with Trump. He said a detente was underway and he had to change his speech at the last minute.

“If we don’t speak, it’s war. Colombia’s history has taught us that,” said the former rebel fighter.

“And what happened was we talked and reestablished communication for the first time. I talked about two things: Venezuela and the issue of drug trafficking,” he said. “I gave him our numbers on what we are doing to fight drugs.”

Petro also accused Colombian politicians of misleading Trump. “Those [people] are responsible for this crisis – let’s call it diplomatic for now, verbal for now – that has erupted between the United States and Colombia,” he said.

Relations between Trump and Petro have been frosty since the Republican’s return to the White House in January 2025.

Trump has repeatedly accused, without evidence, Petro’s administration of allowing a steady flow of cocaine into the United States, imposing sanctions on the Colombian leader in October.

Earlier this week, Trump described Petro as “a sick man who likes to make cocaine and sell it in the United States” and that he should “watch his ass” after the US attack on Venezuela.

“He’s not going to do it for very long, let me tell you,” Trump told reporters Sunday, adding that a military operation there “sounds good.”

For his part, Petro had condemned the US attack on Venezuela as “heinous”, called emergency meetings before the United Nations and the Organization of American States and even threatened to take up arms again to defend Colombia.

Petro and Trump also clashed last year when Colombia initially banned deportation flights from the United States. In September, Washington also revoked Petro’s visa after he joined a pro-Palestinian protest in New York following a United Nations General Assembly meeting and called on American soldiers to “disobey Trump’s orders.”

Petro, who has been a vocal opponent of Israel’s war in Gaza, had accused Trump of being “complicit in genocide” in Gaza and called for “criminal prosecution” following US missile attacks on boats suspected of drug trafficking in Caribbean waters.

Despite the tensions, for Colombia, the United States remains essential to the military fight against left-wing rebels and drug traffickers. Washington has provided Bogota with around $14 billion over the past two decades.

For the United States, Colombia remains the primary source of intelligence used to interdict drugs in the Caribbean and the cornerstone of its overseas counter-drug strategy.

Colombia is also a “major non-NATO ally” of the United States – a designation that belongs to only a handful of countries such as Australia, Japan and Qatar.

“The relationship between Presidents Trump and Petro is volatile and unpredictable,” said Anthea McCarthy-Jones, an expert on Latin American affairs at the University of New South Wales.

“It seems to oscillate between exchanges involving threats and inflammatory language and more reasoned attempts to use diplomacy as a way forward,” she told Al Jazeera.

The Colombian government, for its part, said cooperation between the two countries in the areas of intelligence, defense and law enforcement continued.

Colombian Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez told the New York Times this week that “the Navy, the Coast Guard, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives” have not been disrupted.