In a meeting after the inauguration of Gustavo Petro, the administrator of USAID, Samantha Power, expressed the desire of the United States to continue working together with Colombia, despite the “understandable differences” that they may have.
US President Joe Biden ordered the State Department on Tuesday to continue “US Drug Interdiction Assistance to the Government of Colombia.”
In this sense, it indicated that “it is necessary to interdict aircraft that are reasonably suspected of being mainly engaged in illicit drug trafficking in the airspace of that country, due to the extraordinary threat that illicit drug trafficking represents for the national security of that country.
The memo signed by Biden adds that “Colombia has appropriate procedures in place to protect against the loss of innocent life in the air and on the ground in connection with such interdiction, including effective means of identifying and warning an aircraft before the use of the force is directed against the aircraft.
*Also read: Petro is about to resume dialogue with the ELN while the US wants to work with Colombia
Last July, the White House published its report in which it warns of a 4.7% reduction in the hectares of coca crops in Colombia. According to the new figures, they went from 245,000 hectares in 2020 to 234,000 hectares in 2021.
The Joe Biden administration has been receptive to the new Colombian government, led by President Gustavo Petro. A few hours after his victory at the polls, the US president congratulated his future counterpart by phone; Before his inauguration, he sent a delegation to make approaches and, later, in the act of transfer of command, five of his officials were present, headed by the administrator of Usaid, Samantha Power.
Power expressed the White House’s desire to continue working with Colombia despite the “understandable differences” they may have.
“As I told President Petro, our efforts with Colombia are complementary to the agenda that he has defined (…) President Petro and I recognized that Colombia and the United States, like any other country, will occasionally have differences, but we will remain in dialogue for shared history and common economic ties.
With information from The viewer
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