The meeting that the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and the interim President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, were to hold this Friday on a common border bridge was canceled at the last minute, official Colombian sources confirmed this Thursday. "Yes, canceled," a source from the Casa de Nariño, Colombia's presidential seat, told EFE when asked about versions that circulated today that the meeting between the two leaders, scheduled for this Friday at the Atanasio Girardot international bridge, would not take place. The Atanasio Girardot is one of the four bridges connecting Colombia's Norte de Santander department with Venezuela's Táchira state, where until this afternoon workers were preparing the stage for the encounter. The Colombian government has not given details about the reasons for canceling the meeting, which was eagerly awaited in both countries, although local media reported that it was a decision by Venezuela citing security reasons. After the news of the cancellation, the logistics staff at the bridge began to collect tables and other materials that would be used for the meeting. The meeting had been confirmed last week by the Colombian government, which this afternoon managed to deliver in the border city of Cúcuta, capital of Norte de Santander, press credentials that would cover Petro and Rodríguez the next day. It was expected that at this meeting, Petro and Rodríguez would discuss economic, commercial, and security issues on their common 2,219-kilometer border. The suspension of the meeting came shortly after the Colombian government reported on its X account of a phone call between Petro and U.S. President Donald Trump, in which "energy issues, hydrocarbons, security, illicit crops, eradication, joint work in the fight against drug trafficking, economic reactivation on the border and more" were touched upon.
