Colombias

Feb. 25 (UPI) — Colombian President Gustavo Petro signed a formal request to begin convening a National Constituent Assembly, joining members of his Cabinet at a ceremony in Cartagena.

The initiative, the government said, responds to what it describes as an “institutional blockade” that has hindered approval of several social and economic reforms promoted by the executive branch.

The call for a constituent assembly, already authorized by the relevant electoral authority, requires support from more than 2 million citizens, equivalent to 5% of the national voter registry.

A citizen-led committee has been formed to gather the required signatures within six months. The committee aims to collect 3 million signatures, although Petro had previously suggested a goal of 10 million, local newspaper El Espectador reported.

Petro has been the main advocate of the initiative to reform Colombia’s Constitution. He first raised the possibility of a constituent assembly nearly two years ago and revived the proposal in recent months.

The president has framed the effort as a way to “deepen social reforms” that he argues are necessary for Colombians. He has said the proposals would be of “popular initiative” and that “any citizen will be able to submit proposals,” although they would ultimately be subject to the decision of a citizen committee.

Opposition sectors have criticized the proposal because it would unfold during an active electoral calendar.

Critics argue that the signature-gathering process could allow government-aligned figures, including public officials, to campaign in ways that benefit left-wing candidates in the March congressional elections and the May presidential vote, newspaper El Tiempo reported.

Petro has outlined nine thematic areas that would guide the constituent debate. These include changes to the pension system, healthcare, education, public utilities and the mining code, as well as initiatives related to data sovereignty and artificial intelligence.

He has also proposed deepening agrarian reform and strengthening Colombia’s adaptation and mitigation efforts in response to climate change.

The proposal also calls for a new territorial framework for the country, a judicial reform and changes to the political and electoral system, including adjustments to campaign financing, mandatory voting and recall mechanisms.

It further contemplates immediate legislative implementation of the 2016 peace accords with former guerrilla group FARC, policies addressing drug trafficking and measures aimed at comprehensive national security.

The possibility of holding a constituent assembly remains in its early stages.

If the required number of signatures is reached, the proposal must be debated in Congress. If lawmakers approve it, a national referendum would be called for voters to decide whether to convene the assembly, El Expreso reported. The process also would require review by Colombia’s Constitutional Court.

The Gaitanist Army of Colombia (EGC), the country’s largest criminal organisation, has announced it will temporarily suspend peace talks in Qatar after Colombian President Gustavo Petro reportedly pledged to target its leader.

In a social media post on Wednesday, the EGC, sometimes referred to as the Gulf Clan, indicated the suspension would continue until it received updates from the Petro administration.

“By order of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the EGC delegation at the negotiating table will temporarily suspend talks with the government to consult and clarify the veracity of the information,” the group wrote in a statement on X.

“If the media reports are true, this would be a violation of good faith and the Doha commitments.”

Colombia’s Defence Minister Pedro Sanchez confirmed the reports later on Wednesday, sharing a list of three drug “kingpins” that Petro’s administration would prioritise as “high-level targets”.

Among the three targets was the EGC’s leader, Jesus Avila Villadiego, alias Chiquito Malo. A reward for his capture was set at 5 billion Colombian pesos, equivalent to $1.37m.

The other two “kingpins” included top rebel commanders identified only by their aliases: Ivan Mordisco and Pablito.

The public announcement echoes a private one cemented during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday at the White House, when Petro met United States President Donald Trump in person for the first time.

For months, Trump has pressured the Petro administration to take more “aggressive action” to combat narcotics trafficking out of Colombia.

In response, Petro and his team presented the Trump administration on Tuesday with a dossier on their counter-narcotics operations titled, “Colombia: America’s #1 Ally Against Narcoterrorists”.

The presentation featured statistics on cocaine seizures, programmes to eradicate coca crops, and the high-level arrests and killings of drug lords.

But the commitment to collaborate with the US in the pursuit of Chiquito Malo’s arrest has thrown negotiations with the EGC into peril.

It has also raised questions about the future of Petro’s signature policy, “Total Peace”, which was designed to open talks with rebel groups and criminal networks in an effort to halt Colombia’s six-decade-long internal conflict.

The EGC is a major criminal group with almost 10,000 members, according to a recent report by the Ideas for Peace Foundation.

In December, the US also designated the group as a “foreign terrorist organisation”, as part of its ongoing efforts to crack down on drug trafficking.

The EGC has been engaged in high-level discussions with the Colombian government in Doha since September 2025. The two parties signed a “commitment to peace” on December 5, which outlined a roadmap to the EGC putting down arms.

The first step towards demobilisation was for the group to gather its forces in temporary zones, beginning in March. The government had suspended arrest warrants in December for EGC commanders, including Chiquito Malo, who were due to move to these areas.

But the government’s plans to detain the drug lord, declared yesterday at the White House, destabilised this process, according to analysts.

“[The EGC] interpret this as a direct threat where, if any commander who has arrest warrants … goes to the temporary zones, he runs a high risk,” said Gerson Arias, a conflict and security investigator at the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a Bogota-based think tank.

The Colombian Supreme Court in January approved Chiquito Malo’s extradition to the US in the eventuality of his capture, but the final decision to extradite him resides with the president.

By declaring the drug lord a “target” at the White House, Petro signalled support for capturing and extraditing the EGC commander.

Potential US involvement in the operation also appears to have unsettled the criminal organisation, according to experts.

“It is very different for Chiquito Malo to be pursued solely by the Colombian government than for him to become a target of joint strategic value involving US intelligence,” said Laura Bonilla, a deputy director at the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation, a Colombian think tank.

Although the EGC suspended its peace talks on Wednesday, it stressed that it remained open to resuming negotiations.

“It should be clarified that the suspension is temporary, not permanent, which indicates that they [the talks] will resume shortly,” a lawyer for the group told Al Jazeera, on condition of anonymity.

The representative added that, for talks to continue, the EGC requires that “legal and personal security guarantees” and “the commitments agreed upon in Doha, Qatar, are fulfilled”.

For months, United States President Donald Trump has called him a “sick man” and an “illegal drug leader”.

But on Tuesday, Trump welcomed his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, to the White House for their first face-to-face meeting in Washington, DC.

Both leaders hailed the meeting as productive, while acknowledging the lingering tensions that divide them.

At a news conference after their meeting, Petro waved away questions about his rocky history with Trump, whom he has publicly accused of human rights violations.

Instead, he called the interaction “ a meeting between two equals who have different ways of thinking”.

“He didn’t change his way of his thinking. Neither did I. But how do you do an agreement, a pact? It’s not as between twin brothers. It’s between opponents,” Petro said.

Separately, Trump told reporters from the Oval Office that he felt good about the meeting. “I thought it was terrific,” he said.

On the agenda for the two leaders were issues including the fight against transnational drug trafficking and security in Latin America.

Here are five takeaways from Tuesday’s meeting.

A White House charm offensive

Over the past year, Trump has invited the media to participate in his meetings with foreign leaders, often holding news conferences with the visiting dignitaries in the Oval Office.

Not this time, however. The meeting between Trump and Petro lasted nearly two hours, all of it behind closed doors.

But the two leaders emerged with largely positive things to say about one another.

In a post on social media, Petro revealed that Trump had gifted him several items, including a commemorative photograph of their meeting accompanied by a signed note.

“Gustavo – a great honor. I love Colombia,” it read, followed by Trump’s signature.

In another post, Petro showed off a signed copy of Trump’s book, The Art of the Deal. On its title page, Trump had scrawled another note to Petro: “You are great.”

“Can someone tell me what Trump said in this dedication?” Petro wrote jokingly in Spanish on social media. “I don’t understand much English.”

A turning point in a tense relationship?

Petro’s joke appeared to be a cheeky nod to his notoriously rocky relationship with Trump.

It was only six days into Trump’s second term, on January 26, 2025, that he and Petro began their feud, trading threats on social media over the fate of two US deportation flights.

Petro objected to the reported human rights violations facing the deportees. Trump, meanwhile, took Petro’s initial refusal to accept the flights as a threat to US “national security”. Petro ultimately backed down after Trump threatened steep sanctions on imported Colombian goods.

They continued to trade barbs in the months since. Petro, for instance, has condemned the deadly US attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, comparing the strikes with murder.

He has also criticised Trump for carrying out a US military offensive in Venezuela to abduct then-President Nicolas Maduro. That attack, Petro said, was tantamount to “kidnapping”.

Trump, meanwhile, stripped Petro of his US visa following the Colombian leader’s appearance at the United Nations General Assembly, where he criticised the US and briefly joined a pro-Palestinian protest.

The Trump administration also sanctioned Petro in October, blaming the left-wing leader for allowing “drug cartels to flourish”.

After removing Maduro from power on January 3, Trump offered a warning to Petro: he had better “watch his a**”. The statement was widely interpreted to be a threat of military action against Colombia.

But Trump and Petro appeared to have reached a turning point last month. On January 7, the two leaders held their first call together. Tuesday’s in-person meeting marked another first in their relationship.

Agreeing to disagree

Despite the easing tensions, the two leaders used their public statements after the meeting to reaffirm their differences.

Trump was the first to speak, holding a news conference in the Oval Office as he signed legislation to end a government shutdown.

The US president, a member of the right-wing Republican Party, used the appearance to reflect on the political tensions the two leaders had in the lead-up to the meeting.

“He and I weren’t exactly the best of friends, but I wasn’t insulted, because I’d never met him,” Trump told reporters.

He added that Tuesday’s meeting was nevertheless pleasant. “I didn’t know him at all, and we got along very well.”

Petro, meanwhile, held a longer news conference at the Colombian Embassy in Washington, DC, where he raised some points of divergence he had with Trump.

Among the topics he mentioned was Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which the US has supported, and sustainable energy initiatives designed to be carbon neutral. Trump, in the past, has called the so-called green energy programmes a “scam”.

Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing leader, also reflected on his region’s history with colonialism and foreign intervention. He told reporters it was important that Latin America make decisions for itself, free from any outside “coercion”.

“ We don’t operate under blackmail,” he said at one point, in an apparent reference to Trump’s pressure campaigns.

Differing approach to combating drug trafficking

One of the primary points of contention, however, was Petro’s approach to combating drug trafficking.

Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine, responsible for 68 percent of the global supply.

The Trump administration has used the fight against global drug trafficking as a justification for carrying out lethal military strikes in international waters and in Venezuela, despite experts condemning the attacks as illegal under international law.

It has also stripped Colombia of its certification as an ally in its global counter-narcotics operations.

Trump’s White House has said it will consider reversing that decision if Petro takes “more aggressive action to eradicate coca and reduce cocaine production and trafficking”.

But Petro has rejected any attempt to label him as soft on drug trafficking, instead touting the historic drug busts his government has overseen.

He made this argument yet again after Tuesday’s meeting, claiming that no other Colombian administration had done as much as his to fight cocaine trafficking.

Rather than take a militarised approach to destroying crops of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine, Petro argued that he has had more success with voluntary eradication programmes.

This push, he said, succeeded in “getting thousands of peasant farmers to uproot the plant themselves”.

“These are two different methods, two different ways of understanding how to fight drug trafficking,” Petro said. “One that is brutal and self-interested, and what it ends up doing is promoting mafia powers and drug traffickers, and another approach, which is intelligent, which is effective.”

Petro maintained it was more strategic to go after top drug-ring leaders than to punish impoverished rural farmers by forcibly ripping up their crops.

“I told President Trump, if you want an ally in fighting drug trafficking, it’s going after the top kingpins,” he said.

A Trumpian note

Tuesday’s meeting ultimately marked yet another high-profile reversal for Trump, who has a history of shifting his relationships with world leaders.

Last year, for instance, he lashed out at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a public Oval Office clash, only to warm to the wartime leader several months later.

But Colombia is quickly approaching a pivotal presidential election in May, which will see Petro’s left-wing coalition, the Historic Pact, seek to defend the presidency against an ascendant far right.

Petro himself cannot run for consecutive terms under Colombian law. But there is speculation that Tuesday’s detente with Trump may help Petro’s coalition avoid US condemnation ahead of the vote.

Colombia, after all, was until recently the largest recipient of US aid in South America, and it has long harboured close ties with the North American superpower. Straining those ties could therefore be seen as an election liability.

While Petro acknowledged his differences with Trump during his remarks, at times he expressed certain views that overlapped with the US president’s.

Like Trump has in the past, Petro used part of his speech on Tuesday to question the role of the UN in maintaining global security.

“ Did it not show incapacity? Isn’t a reform needed?” Petro asked, wondering aloud if there was “something superior to the United Nations that would bring humanity together better in a better way”.

But when it came to donning Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, Petro drew a line – or rather, a squiggle.

On social media, he shared an adjustment he made to the cap’s slogan. A jagged, Sharpie-inked “S” amended the phrase to include the entire Western Hemisphere: “Make Americas Great Again.”

BOGOTA, Colombia — President Trump is scheduled to host one of his most vocal regional critics, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, at the White House in a high-stakes meeting analysts suggest could redefine the immediate future of bilateral relations.

Petro has called Trump an “accomplice to genocide” in the Gaza Strip, while the U.S. president called him a “drug lord,” an exchange of insults that escalated with U.S. sanctions against Petro, threats of reciprocal tariffs, the withdrawal of financial aid to Colombia and even the suggestion of a military attack.

Tensions eased in early January when Trump accepted a call from Petro, saying it was a “great honor to speak with the president of Colombia,” who called him to “explain the drug situation and other disagreements.”

The two leaders are expected to meet Tuesday to address strategies for curbing drug trafficking and boosting bilateral trade, while potentially discussing joint operations against Colombian rebel groups fueled by the cocaine trade.

“There’s a lot of space here for mutual cooperation and shared success,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, a Colombia expert at the International Crisis Group.

Combating drug trafficking

Decades of security cooperation once made Colombia the primary U.S. ally in the region, but that relationship has recently faced unprecedented strain.

The two countries have opposing views on how to address the problem of illicit drugs. While the U.S. remains anchored in aggressive eradication and supply-side control, Petro advocates for interdiction, demand reduction and providing economic alternatives for small-scale coca farmers.

In 2025, the U.S. signaled its dissatisfaction with Petro’s anti-drug policy by adding Colombia to a list of nations failing to cooperate in the drug war for the first time in three decades.

Since then, Petro has focused on highlighting the record seizures and claiming that his government has managed to halt the growth of coca leaf crops. However, Colombia’s coca crop has reached historic highs, as the government shifts away from eradication. According to United Nations research, potential cocaine production has surged by at least 65% during the Petro administration, to more than 3,000 tons per year.

The Venezuela factor

The sudden detente between Petro and Trump followed a period of extreme volatility.

Tensions peaked after the Jan. 3 U.S. raid in Caracas that captured then-President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Petro denounced the operation as an act of “aggression” and a “kidnapping,” blasting the U.S. for what he called an “abhorrent” violation of Latin American sovereignty and a “spectacle of death” comparable to Nazi Germany’s 1937 carpet bombing of Guernica, Spain.

Despite recently calling for Maduro’s return to face Venezuelan justice, Petro’s tone softened significantly during a subsequent hourlong call with Trump, paving the way for their upcoming summit.

Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, director for the Andes region at the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank, believes that Trump accepted Petro’s call partly to quell questions about the operation in Venezuela and the growing concern over warnings issued to countries like Colombia.

She also said she considers it likely that both presidents will agree on actions against drug trafficking and a joint fight against the National Liberation Army guerrilla group, which is most active on the border with Venezuela.

‘A quiet, effective cooperation’

Signaling a thaw in relations just days before the White House summit, the Colombian Foreign Ministry announced on Thursday that repatriation flights for deportees from the U.S. have officially resumed.

Images released by the ministry showed citizens arriving at El Dorado airport — a stark contrast to the diplomatic crisis a year ago. At that time, Petro triggered a near trade war by refusing U.S. military deportation flights over “dignity” concerns, only relenting after Trump threatened 50% tariffs and visa cancellations.

“A good outcome [of the meeting] would be that the relationship is cordial, pragmatic, and that the two countries can get back to what they have been doing for years, which is a quiet, effective cooperation on shared security threats,” Dickinson said.

“The less noise there is around the relationship the better.”

Suárez and Rueda write for the Associated Press.

All about the numbers

The Petro administration has also continued to target criminal networks that traffic in cocaine through arrests and the seizure of shipments.

In November, Petro announced the Colombian government had made its largest drug bust in a decade, with law enforcement nabbing nearly 14 tonnes of cocaine.

Gloria Miranda was appointed by Petro in 2024 to lead Colombia’s Directorate for the Substitution of Illicit Crops, the agency overseeing the voluntary eradication efforts.

She believes that the Petro administration’s efforts have been mischaracterised as ineffective.

“There’s been a narrative that Colombia isn’t doing anything in the fight against drug trafficking,” she told Al Jazeera.

“But we’ve seized 276,000 kilogrammes [608,500 pounds] of cocaine, destroyed 18,000 laboratories, arrested 164,000 people, and are replacing more than 30,000 hectares [about 74,100 acres] of illicit crops.”

But critics — including Trump — argue Petro’s measures have yet to translate into results. Coca cultivation and cocaine production remain stubbornly at record levels.

According to the latest United Nations figures, coca cultivation rose in Colombia by about 10 percent in 2023. Potential cocaine output also jumped 53 percent to about 2,600 tonnes.

Petro has questioned the accuracy of those numbers, though. Last week, ahead of Petro’s meeting with Trump, his government announced it would no longer use the United Nations figures, arguing that they rely on an “obscure statistical method”.

Michael Weintraub, the director of the Center for the Study of Security and Drugs (CESED) at the University of the Andes, told Al Jazeera that some of Petro’s pushback is political.

But he added that there is a genuine basis for questioning the UN’s methodology.

“The ‘potential cocaine production’ measure has a lot of baked-in assumptions that make it very difficult to trust,” Weintraub said.

It predicts coca production from selected plots, but yields vary by region and season. The UN itself has admitted there are limitations in its method.

Despite these concerns, coca cultivation in Colombia has trended upward for decades.

Analysts note one overriding factor: demand. Consumption in North America and Europe remains strong, and new markets have emerged in Asia, Africa and South America.

“Coca can only grow in limited places due to climate, soil and elevation,” Weintraub said. “So Colombia is likely to remain a major producer for the foreseeable future.”