Colombian President Gustavo Petro Meets with Trump at the White House

Rather than further inflame tensions, the first in-person meeting between the two leaders yielded smiling photos and complimentary words, if no concrete agreements.

Many feared the worst from Tuesday’s meeting between President Trump and President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, the first face-to-face encounter between two leaders known for speaking their minds.

For a year, the two had been engaged in a war of words and ideology, and Mr. Trump has used White House visits to ambush foreign leaders and flex his power. Colombia is also the world’s primary source of cocaine, and Mr. Trump has vowed to crush transnational drug trafficking networks, some of which have bases in Colombia.

But after a private meeting that lasted more than two hours, the first images emerged: the two leaders smiling broadly, flanked by top officials; then a photo with a note from Mr. Trump saying “I love Colombia” and a signed copy for Mr. Petro of “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” with a dedication: “You are great.”

Colombians — from the embassy in Washington to the streets of Bogotá, the capital — seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

“By the blessing of God, the meeting was a complete success! Long live Colombia,” said Oscar Gamboa, a diplomat, in a text message to The New York Times, adding a Colombian flag emoji.

In a news conference after the White House visit, Mr. Petro said he had emerged feeling “optimistic and positive,” though he said the Caribbean was now the “eye of the storm” of U.S. foreign policy. (Colombia and Venezuela both have long Caribbean coasts from where some drugs bound for the United States leave.)

Mr. Petro’s remarks, at the Colombian Embassy in Washington, revolved around what Mr. Petro described as a “difficult” moment for Colombia and Venezuela. He said he had proposed to Mr. Trump renewing Colombia’s bond with the United States by jointly cracking down on drug trafficking groups active on both sides of the Colombian-Venezuelan border and through investing in clean energy that could supply both countries with electricity.

Mr. Trump, for his part, said that he had a good meeting with Mr. Petro. When asked if the two had come to any agreement on counter-narcotic efforts, Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House: “We worked on it, and we got along very well.”

There had been good reason to believe the two presidents could clash on Tuesday, experts said. Mr. Petro has taken on Mr. Trump on everything from deportations to the U.S. military’s boat strikes against what the Trump administration has said are drug traffickers.

U.S. officials revoked Mr. Petro’s visa last fall, and imposed sanctions on him along with members of his family and his government. The U.S. government issued Mr. Petro a short-term visa for this week’s trip to the capital.

In an interview with a Colombian radio station after the meeting, Mr. Petro rated it a “nine” on a scale of one to 10 and said “not even a second” had been spent discussing the sanctions or his visa issues.

After the meeting, Mr. Trump said that, in addition to counternarcotics, the two were “working on some other things too, including sanctions.”

It was an unexpected turnaround from the state of affairs just a month ago.

After the U.S. military raid in Venezuela that ousted Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Mr. Trump suggested that Colombia could be the next country he would target.

But the two leaders had an amicable phone call a few days later, arranged by Colombia’s ambassador Daniel García-Peña with the help of the Republican Senator Rand Paul, and Mr. Trump announced that Mr. Petro would be visiting Washington.

On Monday, Mr. Trump implied that by removing Mr. Maduro he had cowed Mr. Petro into behaving — and taking a more aggressive approach toward armed drug-trafficking groups.

“Somehow, after the Venezuelan raid, he became very nice — he changed his attitude very much,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Petro during a question-and-answer session in the Oval Office on Monday.

“We’re going to be talking about drugs,” he said, “because tremendous amounts of drugs come out of his country.”

It was not clear exactly what concrete agreements, if any, had been reached between Mr. Trump and Mr. Petro.

It is customary for visiting leaders to bring gifts to the White House, and Mr. Petro reportedly gave Mr. Trump chocolate and coffee made through efforts to supplant the farming of coca — the base ingredient for cocaine — with other products.

On Tuesday, the Colombian government also extradited to the United States an accused high-ranking leader of an organized crime group.

Despite all the rancor on social media over the past year, ultimately “it wasn’t in the interest of the U.S. to be in conflict with its most strategic ally on narcotrafficking,” said Gimena Sánchez, a Colombian human rights activist at the Washington Office on Latin America.

“No matter who has been in charge of both countries,” she said, “that codependency has always been understood.”

Mr. Petro, who upon leaving the White House was spotted carrying a red MAGA hat, said that he added an S to the cap that President Trump gifted him, converting his counterpart’s well-known slogan into his own: “Make Americas Great Again.”

Erica L. Green, Jorge Valencia, Simón Posada and Federico Rios contributed reporting.

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