Colombian President Gustavo Petro again referred on Tuesday to the meeting he will hold next February 3 with his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump, at the White House, an encounter he anticipates will be 'decisive' for him and for 'the life of humanity'. 'It is a key, fundamental, decisive meeting, not only of my personal life, but of the life of humanity,' the president said during an event at the Casa de Nariño, the presidential seat. On the same stage, Petro questioned the fact that the United States had revoked his visa after an improvised speech in favor of the Palestinian cause last September in New York following his participation in the United Nations General Assembly, only to grant it again now, prior to his trip to Washington this Sunday. 'They took my visa away, now they say they gave it back to me. We will find out on February 3,' the president indicated. Additionally, Petro revealed that Americans told Trump that his wife, Colombia's First Lady Verónica Alcocer, had received money from Nicolás Maduro to finance groups in Colombia, an accusation that, he implied, the U.S. dismissed. 'It was a friend who had assets in the United States and who thought it was more serious to lose the assets than to lie to us,' Petro said. 'The gringos made no effort, which is why I have no 'indictment' (...) I have not received a penny from Maduro because I did not believe in Maduro,' he continued. Earlier this Tuesday, at another official event also in Bogotá, Petro stated that the United States must return Maduro to Venezuela so that he can be judged by a court of that country and criticized the military attack of past January 3 in Caracas, in which the Chavist leader was captured. 'They have to return him (to Maduro) and have him judged by a Venezuelan court, not a U.S. one, because Latin American civilization is different from the Anglo-Saxon European one,' Petro said in an impassioned speech at a hospital in Bogotá. Petro's statements come a week before his scheduled meeting with Trump at the White House, after a year of disagreements between the two leaders that began on January 26, 2025, when the Colombian president refused to receive a flight with migrants from the United States, denouncing an 'indign treatment' for his fellow citizens.
