Colombian President Gustavo Petro arrived at the White House on Tuesday for his first ever meeting with President Donald Trump, following months of tensions and escalating US threats over Venezuela and drugs.
Leftist Petro found himself in Trump’s crosshairs following the US military operation that toppled Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro exactly a month ago, with the US leader warning his Colombian counterpart to “watch his ass.”
The pair had also long exchanged online insults, as Petro defended Maduro and criticized US raids on alleged drug trafficking boats in waters off South America.
But after an apparently warm phone call on January 7 the two agreed on Tuesday’s talks. Petro’s car, with a Colombian flag, arrived at the White House via a private entrance just before the scheduled meeting time, an AFP photographer saw.
The encounter is due to be held behind closed doors in the Oval Office.
In an olive branch to Trump hours before their talks, Petro extradited an accused drug lord to the United States, ending a months-long suspension of sending alleged narcotraffickers abroad.
Petro “gave a very clear order over the weekend that the criminal alias Pipe Tulua be extradited from Colombia to the United States as quickly as possible,” Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez, who accompanied Petro to Washington, said as he named the suspect.
– ‘Became very nice’ –
A month ago the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders from vastly different ends of the political spectrum seemed an unlikely prospect.
Asserting US dominance over the region, Trump dramatically stepped up threats of military action against Colombia following the lightning raid to capture Maduro from neighboring Venezuela.
Trump branded Petro a “sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States” and said that a similar US intervention in Colombia “sounds good to me.”
But the hastily-arranged call last month seemed to have been a turning point.
“I mean, he’s been very nice over the last month or two,” Trump said on Monday. “He was certainly critical before that, but somehow, after the Venezuelan raid, he became very nice. I look forward to seeing him.”
Trump said the meeting would also focus on drugs. As with other Latin American nations, he has been pushing Colombia, the world’s biggest producer of cocaine, to crack down on the trade.
“We’re going to be talking about drugs, because tremendous amounts of drugs come out of his country,” said Trump.
The Colombian delegation was reportedly bringing a plan to crack down on drug trafficking.
– ‘Off the rails’ –
For decades, Colombia was Washington’s closest partner in Latin America, with billions of dollars flowing to Bogota to boost the country’s military and intelligence services in the drug fight.
But under Petro, coca production and cocaine exports have surged.
Critics blame the end of eradication programs and his policy of negotiating with an alphabet soup of drug-running guerrillas, cartels and paramilitaries who still control swaths of the country.
Colombia meanwhile offered another olive branch on Friday when it abruptly agreed to accept US deportation flights — reversing the very decision that triggered the falling-out between Trump and Petro last year.
In Bogota there has been deep nervousness about what might happen in the meeting.
Diplomats joke darkly about Petro being “Zelenskyed” — receiving an Oval Office dressing down like the Ukrainian president did in February 2025.
“Both Trump and Petro are volatile,” said Felipe Botero, a political expert at the University of the Andes. “The meeting could easily go off the rails.”
The ex-guerrilla Colombian leader is prone to long, bombastic monologues while former reality star Trump rarely likes to share the spotlight.
dk/dw
