Colombian President Gustavo Petro and his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump, spoke by telephone for the first time on Wednesday amid an escalation of verbal threats between them. Sources from Colombia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed to EFE the conversation between the presidents, which lasted more than 40 minutes. In a speech before thousands of people who filled Bolívar Square, in the center of Bogotá, at a rally «in defense of sovereignty» following threats from his U.S. counterpart, Petro gave some clues about the content and tone of the conversation. «In the middle of the debate that has erupted in these two, three days, today I was going to give a speech and I have to give another one. The first speech was quite tough,» Petro said, apparently referring to the conversation with Trump. Petro convened this conversation in the midst of a war of words with Trump, who last Sunday told journalists aboard Air Force One that, like Venezuela, «Colombia is also very sick.» In reference to Petro, Trump then said that the country is «governed by a sick man who likes to make cocaine and sell it to the United States, and that is something he is not going to be doing for much longer.» When asked if that meant there could be an operation in Colombia, like the one carried out in Venezuela against Maduro, he replied: «that sounds good to me.» The Colombian president reacted with another threat, to take up arms again if necessary, as in his years as a guerrilla with the M-19, to defend the sovereignty of the «illegitimate threat» from Trump. According to Petro, in his speech today, «politicians who are responsible for having relations with drug trafficking and having shattered the peace» of Colombia, «deceived Trump» by linking the Colombian president to mafias to turn him against him and provoke a crisis with the United States. «Well, those same ones are responsible for this crisis, let's call it diplomatic for now, verbal for now, that has erupted between the United States and Colombia,» the president stressed. According to the head of state, his enemies «seem to want the helicopters to arrive here as in Caracas and throw some missiles at us,» as happened on Saturday in Caracas when Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured. Trump said after the phone call that he is considering meeting with Petro amid tensions between the two governments due to the Republican's repeated criticism of the Colombian leader and Bogotá's rejection of the U.S. military operation in Venezuela.
