PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) – President Donald Trump said Sunday he would cut U.S. funding to Colombia because the country’s leader is “doing nothing to stop” drug production, in the latest sign of friction between Washington and one of its closest allies in Latin America.
In a social media post, Trump discussed Colombian President Gustavo Petro as “an illegal drug dealer” who is “low-rated and very unpopular.” He warned that Petro “had better shut down” the drug operations, “otherwise the United States will shut them down for him, and that won’t be done well.” Colombian Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez, defending Petro and the country’s commitment to the fight against drugs, said: “If there is a country that has used all its capabilities and has also lost men and women in the fight against drug trafficking… it is Colombia. »
Trump, while at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, wrote on his Truth Social platform that Petro “strongly encourages the mass production of drugs, in fields large and small” across the world. Colombiathat the Republican president first misspelled Columbia before deleting his post and replacing it with the country’s correct spelling. “Petro is doing nothing to stop it, despite large-scale payments and subsidies from the United States that are nothing but a long-term scam for America,” Trump said.
“Starting today, these payments, or any other form of payment or subsidy, will no longer be made to Colombia,” Trump said. He also said Petro had “a new mouth toward America.”
Hours later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the latest U.S. strike in the waters off South America, this time against a ship he said was associated with a Colombian rebel group — the National Liberation Army, or ELN — and was carrying “substantial quantities of narcotics,” but did not say how it became known to U.S. intelligence agencies. He said on social media that three men on board were killed in Friday’s attack. A brief video clip he attached showed a boat in flames after an explosion. The State Department designated the group as foreign terrorist organization in 1997.
Earlier on Sunday, Petro accused the U.S. government of assassination and demanded answers after a U.S. strike Thursday in Caribbean waters. The United States announced on Saturday that it was repatriating two survivors of this attack to Colombia and Ecuador, the sixth since the beginning of September. With Hegseth’s announcement, at least 32 people were killed in strikes that the United States said targeted suspected drug traffickers.
There was no immediate reaction from the ELN, with which Petro suspended peace talks in January after a violent incursion on the border with Venezuela. The group has denied any involvement in drug trafficking, but Colombian authorities regularly report the dismantling of cocaine laboratories and the seizure of drugs belonging to the guerrillas.
In September, the Trump administration accused Colombia of not to cooperate in the war on drugs, although at the time Washington announced a lifting of sanctions that would have triggered a reduction in aid. Colombia is the world’s largest exporter of cocaine and grows the essential ingredient coca leaves reached a record level last year, according to the United Nations.
Most recently, the State Department announced it would revoke Petro’s visa while he was in New York for the U.N. General Assembly because of his participation in a protest in which he called on U.S. soldiers to stop following Trump’s orders. “I ask all soldiers of the United States military not to point their guns at humanity” and to “disobey Trump’s orders,” Petro said.
Petro said a Colombian man was killed in a September 16 strike and identified him as Alejandro Carranza, a fisherman from the coastal town of Santa Marta. He said Carranza had no connection to drug trafficking and that his boat was malfunctioning when it was struck.
“US government officials committed murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters,” Petro wrote on
Petro said he alerted the attorney general’s office and demanded that it act immediately to pursue legal action internationally and in U.S. courts. He continued to post a series of messages early Sunday about the killing.
“The United States invaded our national territory, fired a missile to kill a humble fisherman and destroyed his family, his children. This is Bolívar’s homeland, and they are murdering his children with bombs,” Petro wrote.
Separately, Noticias Caracol, a Colombian news program, reported that the man injured in the latest strike was hospitalized after his repatriation and remained in serious condition.
Colombian Interior Minister Armando Benedetti said the Colombian “will be prosecuted, he will be received – pardon the harsh expression – as a criminal, because so far what we know is that he was transporting a boat full of cocaine, which in our country is a crime, and even if he was in international waters, his repatriation will be as if he were being prosecuted in the United States.”
Petro said the man was on board a “narco submarine.”
Ecuador’s Interior Ministry confirmed in a statement sent to The Associated Press on Sunday that the United States had repatriated an Ecuadorian injured in the latest strike. Authorities identified him as Andrés Fernando Tufiño Chila and said a doctor deemed him in good health.
The ministry noted that two prosecutors met with Tufiño Chila and determined that he had not committed any crimes within the country’s borders and that there was no evidence to the contrary.
___
Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Associated Press writer Astrid Suárez in Bogotá, Colombia, contributed to this report.
