Gustavo Petro announced Wednesday that he is working with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on a joint statement to end the war in Ukraine. “Peace negotiations are necessary. The conflict escalates. We have no international aggression,” said the Colombian President at the Latin America, United States and Spain in the World Economy Forum, an event organized by EL PAÍS and the Spain-US Chamber of Commerce in New York. Petro attended the event the day after his shocking speech to the UN General Assembly declaring the failure of the drug war and the fight against climate change.
He had not spoken at length about the invasion since he came to power in August. This time it has joined López Obrador’s peace project proposed by a UN committee to declare a truce of at least five years in the war in Ukraine. The idea, launched in the middle of Ukraine’s counter-offensive against Russian troops, met with outright rejection in Kyiv. An aide to Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this would give Moscow time to replenish reserves and launch a new offensive. “So it’s a Russian plan,” he concluded.
Petro ignored the criticism and said he was in contact with the Mexican president to move forward with the initiative. In an interview with Jan Martínez Ahrens, director of EL PAÍS América, he said that there are no “good or bad invasions”, avoiding directly condemning Russia. “It’s a battle of the planet that has received invasions of Guatemala and Panama, even Colombia has lost part of its territory to external aggression. Latin America doesn’t tour the same way Europe does. Europe sees it differently,” he defended his position. And he has again criticized the US for its international policies in the past: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is as bad as that of Iraq and Syria.”
The Colombian President during the dialogue: Juan Arredondo
Regarding the resistance he has encountered during this month and a half of government, Petro recalls that Colombia has suffered greatly from sectarian violence. Politicians have a responsibility not to create a climate of violence with their statements. “We cannot afford this luxury, from sectarianism we are going to genocide. It is dangerous. A ruler has to be very careful with every word.” The president has surrounded himself with ministers of varying sensibilities, some of them from the Conservative party. Former President Juan Manuel Santos said in a recent interview with EL PAÍS that the Petro government is well oriented, although lacking in rigor and method to refine narratives. “It’s not a homogeneous government, it’s a legitimate criticism because there isn’t a unified narrative, it has diversity,” he said, not wanting to fight hand in hand with Santos.
Petro arrived in New York with a strong message against the US anti-drugs policy: it was a failure and needs to be reconsidered. He told anyone who would listen, from the President of the UN to Congressmen, colleagues from other countries, businessmen, governors, directors of world organizations. His message to the General Assembly was one of the most powerful spoken by a Latin American leader in a decade. Tonight he will have the opportunity to raise it himself at a dinner at the Museum of Natural History with Joe Biden, whom he hopes to persuade to put all the money earmarked for guns and the prosecution of drug cartels in the custody of the Amazon – to transfer jungle. The President will face opposition as this is a deeply entrenched policy in Washington, backed by agencies as powerful and influential as the DEA.
However, he affirms that he sees greater sensitivity on the part of the US government in this regard. “There’s a more open mentality,” he added. His intention is to steer the discussion about drugs in a different direction, towards “another axis, that of the climate crisis”. He recalled that, together with the United States, the first military unit was created exclusively dedicated to extinguishing fires in the Amazon jungle, and has several black hawks that would have previously been used in the internal war that Colombia has been fighting for more than leads 50 years. “I want to continue this thread because it’s a more positive dialogue than the misnamed war on drugs.”
He also wanted to stress that his testimony at the UN was neither looking for external enemies nor evading the responsibility that the country’s rulers bear in its security crisis. “The problems don’t just come from the outside. They are the product of an indolent business elite. The prospects of being in New York can’t fool us,” he said.
Gustavo Petro, upon his arrival at the Forum in New York.Juan Arredondo
The President is convinced that the time has come to achieve total peace as he calls for disarmament and submission of all armed actors in the country. At the moment, he explained, there are no organizations as large as Pablo Escobar’s was in his day, but rather small cells that operate separately. “All these organizations with names that are no longer enough, a maze, have sent letters to the government asking them to start talks. Their way is to negotiate legal benefits with the justice system to get them to shut down.”
Ahrens wanted to know why Petro sought mediation from Nicolás Maduro in the negotiations with the ELN, the last active guerrilla in Colombia. He has replied that he is continuing the process from the same place where Santos left him, who had the support of Venezuela itself, Cuba and Brazil to disarm the FARC in 2016. “It has played a positive role (Venezuela) that is not always recognized. , It’s over.
In a previous intervention at the same forum, Costa Rica’s Minister of Foreign Trade, Manuel Tovar, underlined the country’s values in addressing economic challenges: sustainability, environmental protection and respect for workers’ rights. These values, he added, have allowed the Central American country to change its model since the 1980s towards a “sophisticated economy” dependent on tourism, which has been so badly affected by the pandemic and is now in the process of recovery (with 80%, according to our own calculations), but also goods such as medical devices.
Tovar spoke of the threat to the political stability of the countries around him (particularly Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, whose departure to the north) and of his plans to continue working on relations with Spain and the United States while maintaining peaceful ones strengthen trade front, through its exchanges with countries like Ecuador. He also announced an alliance with Iceland, Switzerland, Norway and Fiji (“all countries, like ours, on the front lines of climate change”) to strengthen shared values and send a message to the international community: “It is possible Foreign trade growing hand in hand with the environment”.
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