March 29, 2023, 10:50 PM
March 29, 2023, 10:50 PM
The Peruvian government announced on Wednesday (03.29.2023) the definitive withdrawal of its ambassador to Colombia following the “interfering and offensive” comments made by President Gustavo Petro, who “persists in distorting reality” by not knowing that former president Pedro Castillo carried out a failed self-coup on December 7.
An official statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs added that Petro’s attitude and his “continuous meddling expressions have seriously deteriorated the historic relationship of friendship, cooperation and mutual respect” that has existed between Peru and Colombia.
The Foreign Ministry indicated that Peru has reacted in a “balanced, progressive and proportional manner, in accordance with diplomatic practice and taking into account the close relationship that unites it with Colombia, for more than 200 years.”
In this sense, he stressed that the country “hopes that the close and bicentennial bilateral relationship with Colombia resumes its path within the framework of mutual respect and the norms, principles and values that govern coexistence between states.”
Relationships at the lowest level
The ministry specified that “with the definitive retirement of the ambassador of Peru in Colombia (Félix Denegri Boza) diplomatic relations between Peru and that country are formally at the level of charge d’affaires.”
Last February, the Peruvian Congress had already declared Petro persona non grata for his comments against the government of President Dina Boluarte and other state entities, by not recognizing the legitimacy of his management.
Thus, at the last Ibero-American Summit held in the Dominican Republic, Petro said that the person who should be present at the meeting of heads of state was Pedro Castillo, who is being detained while being investigated for the crimes of rebellion and conspiracy as a result of the failed coup attempt. of State.
“Today he should be here, they released him. He is in prison,” Petro said in the presence of the Peruvian Foreign Minister, Ana Cecilia Gervasi, who replied that if Castillo is not present it is because “he staged a coup.”
“If it were, they would have a dictator,” Gervasi said at the summit.
The Foreign Ministry also withdrew its ambassador to Mexico in February, following comments by its president Andrés Manuel López Obrador of open rejection of the legitimacy of Boluarte, who became the Peruvian Executive in 2021 as Castillo’s vice president.
This Wednesday, López Obrador reiterated that “the legal and legitimate president of Peru is Pedro Castillo, who is unjustly in jail. They are accusing him, since he entered they began to accuse him, and they have him in jail.”
However, the Mexican president added that he will talk with Petro and with the president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, to see how to hand over the pro tempore presidency of the Pacific Alliance to Peru, after having refused to do so in recent months.
