By MATTHEW LEE and FATIMA HUSSEIN, Related Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration imposed sanctions Friday on Colombian President Gustavo Petro, his household and a member of his authorities over accusations of involvement within the international drug commerce, sharply escalating tensions with the leftist chief of one of many closest U.S. allies in South America.
The Treasury Division leveled the penalties towards Petro; his spouse, Veronica del Socorro Alcocer Garcia; his son, Nicolas Fernando Petro Burgos; and Colombian Inside Minister Armando Alberto Benedetti.
Petro “has allowed drug cartels to flourish and refused to cease this exercise,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated in an announcement. “President Trump is taking robust motion to guard our nation and clarify that we are going to not tolerate the trafficking of medication into our nation.”
The transfer ramps up a rising conflict between the Republican U.S. president and Colombia’s first leftist chief, notably over lethal American strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats off South America.
This week, the Trump administration expanded its crackdown to the japanese Pacific Ocean, the place a lot of the cocaine from the world’s largest producers, together with Colombia, is smuggled. And in an escalation of army firepower within the area, the U.S. army is sending an plane provider to the waters off South America, the Pentagon introduced Friday.
The U.S. final month added Colombia, the highest recipient of American help within the area, to an inventory of countries failing to cooperate within the drug battle for the primary time in virtually 30 years.
The penalties have been anticipated after Trump not too long ago stated he would slash help to Colombia and impose tariffs on its exports, referring to Petro on social media in latest days as “an unlawful drug chief.”
“He’s a man that’s making a number of medicine,” Trump advised reporters within the Oval Workplace on Wednesday. “He higher watch it, or we’ll take very critical motion towards him and his nation.”
After Trump accused him of getting ties to drug trafficking, Petro on Wednesday stated he would resort to the U.S. courtroom system to defend himself.
“Towards the calumnies that high-ranking officers have hurled at me on U.S. soil, I’ll defend myself judicially with American attorneys within the U.S. courts,” Petro wrote on X with out naming Trump however citing a information report about his feedback.
A day earlier, Petro’s anti-drug coverage was the topic of a gathering between him and the U.S. chargé d’affaires in Colombia, John T. McNamara. McNamara additionally met with Overseas Minister Rosa Yolanda Villavicencio Mapy on Thursday.
Petro has repeatedly defended his coverage, which strikes away from a repressive method and prioritizes reaching agreements with growers of coca leaf — the uncooked materials for cocaine — to encourage them to modify to different crops, pursuing main drug lords and combating cash laundering. He has stated his authorities has achieved file cocaine seizures and questioned U.N. figures displaying file coca leaf cultivation and cocaine manufacturing.
The quantity of land devoted to cultivating coca, the bottom ingredient of cocaine, has virtually tripled up to now decade to a file 253,000 hectares (625,000 acres) in 2023, in accordance with the most recent report accessible from the U.N. Workplace on Medication and Crime. That’s about triple the scale of New York Metropolis.
The Trump administration has surged army ships and planes to Latin America to focus on traffickers accused of funneling medicine to the U.S. Petro has pushed again towards the strikes which have killed at the very least 37 folks since they began final month, with the most recent two concentrating on vessels within the japanese Pacific, the place Colombia has a shoreline.
Petro has repeatedly feuded with Trump this yr. Petro initially rejected U.S. army flights of deported migrants, main Trump to threaten tariffs. The State Division stated it will revoke Petro’s visa when he attended the U.N. Normal Meeting in New York as a result of he advised American troopers to disobey Trump’s orders.
Lee reported from Jerusalem. Related Press writers Will Weissert in Washington and Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.
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