Colombia recalls ambassador from U.S. after Trump pulls funding

by · UPI

Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Colombia has recalled its ambassador to the United States in the wake of a feud between President Donald Trump and the president of Colombia over deadly U.S. naval attacks in the Caribbean.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the United States of murdering a fisherman in a strike against a boat in Colombian waters in September. On Sunday, Trump posted on Truth Social that he was halting all funding to the country, which received $440 million in 2023.

Trump called Petro "an illegal drug leader," saying he "does nothing to stop" the production of drugs in Colombia. Petro repeatedly has rebuffed the accusations, saying his government seized about 1,000 tons of cocaine and closed more than 5,000 cocaine laboratories in 2024.

Petro and his administration said the strike on the boat, which Trump alleged was a drug smuggling boat, was a "direct threat to national sovereignty" and that the victim was a "lifelong fisherman" and a "humble human being."

Related

"U.S. government officials have committed a murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters. Fisherman Alejandro Carranza had no ties to the drug trade and his daily activity was fishing," Petro said in a post on X. "The Colombian boat was adrift and had its distress signal up due to an engine failure."

"These accusations constitute an act of the utmost seriousness and go against the dignity of the President of the Colombians, who has led and tirelessly fought against drug trafficking in our country," the Colombian government said in a statement. "He has achieved, during his years as a president, the highest seizures of illicit drugs ever recorded in recent history, in addition to promoting a comprehensive effort to eradicate the scourge of drugs throughout the region."

The Colombian embassy posted on X Monday that it's recalling the ambassador.

Then Petro posted on X a list of reasons for the drug war in Colombia and what his government is doing to fight it. He also included some blame: "Consumption in the U.S. and the growing consumption in Europe are responsible for 300,000 murders in Colombia and a million deaths in Latin America."

He then offered Trump a plan to help prevent drug production in Colombia.

"I propose to Trump the opposite: remove tariffs on Colombia's agricultural and agro-industrial production, to strengthen legitimate agricultural production, invest in agrarian reform so that the peasantry moves to fertile lands near the cities and does not adopt the jungle as a means of survival, stimulate commercial spaces in the U.S. to purchase, by long-term contract, agricultural products from crop substitution zones in Colombia, legalize the export of cannabis as any good, given its exclusion as a dangerous substance in the U.N., strengthen the policy of prevention of consumption in the U.S., scientifically study whether prohibition is necessary or rather responsible and state-regulated consumption, build a more effective treaty for the pursuit of narcos' capital and assets in the world," Petro posted.