Trump calls Colombia's Petro 'a drug leader', says US to cut aid to country

Washington [US], October 20: United States President Donald Trump has called his Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro an "illegal drug leader", announcing that the US will slash funding to the South American nation.
President Petro is "strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs" across Colombia, Trump claimed in a post on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, in which he repeatedly spelled it as "Columbia".
He called Petro a "low rated and very unpopular" leader, warning that he "better close up" drug operations or the US "will close them up for him, and it won't be done nicely".
"The purpose of this drug production is the sale of massive amounts of product into the United States, causing death, destruction, and havoc," Trump added, saying US payments and subsidies to Colombia were a rip-off.
"AS OF TODAY, THESE PAYMENTS, OR ANY OTHER FORM OF PAYMENT, OR SUBSIDIES, WILL NO LONGER BE MADE," he wrote in capital letters. It was not clear what payments Trump was referring to.
A while later, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, writing on X, said the Pentagon had attacked and destroyed a vessel associated with a Colombian group "in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility", which includes the Caribbean, on Friday.
Hegseth said three people were killed in the attack, claiming that the ship was affiliated with the leftist rebel group National Liberation Army and was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, without offering evidence to back the claim.
Earlier on Sunday, President Petro accused Trump's government of assassination and demanded answers after the latest US strikes in Caribbean waters. The US said on Saturday that it was repatriating to Colombia and Ecuador two survivors from its attack on a semi-submersible vessel, the sixth since early September.
At least 29 people have been killed in strikes that the US has said are targeting alleged drug traffickers. The deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean have outraged Colombians.
Meanwhile many legal experts and human rights activists have also condemned the extraordinary series of US military actions, with Amnesty International describing it as murder on the high seas.
Last month, the Trump administration accused Colombia of failing to cooperate in the drug war, although at the time Washington issued a waiver of sanctions that would have triggered aid cuts. Colombia is the world's largest exporter of cocaine, and the cultivation of the critical ingredient of coca leaves reached an all-time high last year, according to the United Nations.
Source: Qatar Tribune