Colombian President Gustavo Petro sworn in this Wednesday the former minister Luis Gilberto Murillo as Colombia’s new ambassador to the US with the aim of changing things that, in the president’s opinion, have not worked well in the bilateral relationship, such as the war on drugs.
(Joe Biden government delegation will travel to meet with Gustavo Petro).
“The importance of this position with the country that has been determining the destinies of Colombia for many decades cannot be hidden. You are our ambassador to try to change things that have not worked well”said the head of state during the act in which Murillo was sworn in.
The president also assured that today he spoke with the commander of the US Southern Command, General Laura J. Richardson, to whom he said that “anti-drug policy” failed. “The policy that was called the war on drugs, from Nixon times to now, has failed. And it is our duty before the United States itself, but also before the world, not only to say so but to propose alternatives,” added the president.
Likewise, he said that the idea is that Colombia and the US build “jointly the grounds of peace and a more solid democracy throughout the continent.”
(The challenges for Luis Gilberto Murillo, the next ambassador to the US).
“I proposed to the general the construction of a military force, which she already told me she had an outline in Brazil, with helicopters, etc., but destined to put out the fires of the Amazon jungle, which is the main security problem of humanity today,” Petro said.
He added that before the “burning of the Amazon jungle”, the best message that your country and the United States can give is “military collaboration.” “And these types of issues are going to be configured as a new agenda in the relations between the two countries, whose person in charge of the daily and daily procedure is our ambassador Luis Gilberto Murillo,” he pointed out.
Murillo, 55, a mining engineer from the Moscow State University, was governor of the department of Chocó (1997-1999, 2012-2013) and minister of Environment and Sustainable Development between 2016 and 2018, during the Government of Juan Manuel Santos .
(Petro has already decided on his ambassador to the US: it will be Luis Gilberto Murillo).
The official had to take refuge with his family in USA after being kidnapped by paramilitaries and where he worked in various organizations such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
EFE
