Colombian President Gustavo Petro held his first face-to-face talks with US President Donald Trump following a thaw in relations marked by sharp rhetoric, a surprise phone call and a last-minute extradition gesture
Colombian President Gustavo Petro arrived at the White House on Tuesday for his first meeting with US President Donald Trump, marking a rare face-to-face encounter after months of tensions over Venezuela and drug trafficking.
Petro, a leftist leader, had come under sharp criticism from Trump following a US military operation that toppled Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro a month ago. At the time, Trump warned his Colombian counterpart to “watch his ass.”
The two leaders have previously exchanged online insults, with Petro defending Maduro and criticising US raids on suspected drug trafficking vessels in waters off South America.
However, relations appeared to thaw after what was described as a warm phone call on January 7, paving the way for Tuesday’s talks. Petro’s motorcade, bearing the Colombian flag, entered the White House through a private entrance shortly before the scheduled meeting, an AFP photographer reported.
The meeting is set to take place behind closed doors in the Oval Office.
Hours ahead of the talks, Petro made a conciliatory gesture by extraditing an alleged drug lord to the United States, ending a months-long pause on extraditions of suspected narcotraffickers.
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,” Defence Minister Pedro Sanchez, who accompanied Petro to Washington, said.
‘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.
End of Article
