The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, assured this Thursday that his country will present a proposal to the UN to stop the United States attacks against boats attributed to drug trafficking in the Caribbean Sea, which he described as “aggression” against the region.
“The operation in the Caribbean is illegal according to Amnesty International. What do the Caribbean governments think? What do their people think? Colombia must present a proposal to the United Nations asking for an end to the aggression against the Caribbean,” the president said in a message published on the social network X.
The Secretary of War of the United States, Pete Hegseth, reported on Tuesday that his country’s Army attacked four vessels “in international waters” on Monday, killing fourteen people allegedly related to drug trafficking.
The senior official noted on Wednesday that the US carried out a new attack against another boat attributed to drug trafficking in the eastern Pacific and, during the operation, four people who were on board the vessel died.
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With this new attack, there are now fifteen vessels destroyed by US forces in international waters – half of them in the Pacific – and which the US links to drug trafficking activities, since the beginning of the Southern Command military campaign that initially focused on the Caribbean, near Venezuelan waters.
Last week, US President Donald Trump assured that he does not rule out attacks on ground targets in Venezuela and Colombia, always related to drug trafficking, and added that, if these maneuvers are carried out, he will notify Congress.
These attacks deepen tensions between Washington and the governments of Colombia and Venezuela, whose presidents Trump has accused of promoting drug trafficking.
Last week, the United States included Petro himself, his wife Verónica Alcocer, his son Nicolás Petro and the Minister of the Interior, Armando Benedetti, on the list of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), known as the ‘Clinton List’, for alleged links to drug trafficking.
In September, the Pentagon removed Colombia – considered the world’s largest producer of cocaine – from the list of countries that collaborated in the anti-drug fight during the last year.
Since then, relations between both countries, already marked since January by disagreements on issues such as the fight against drugs, migration and the Israeli offensive in Gaza, have deteriorated even further.
With information from EFE.
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