President Gustavo Petro’s agenda began in New York, USA, from where he made his first defense of the total peace that could be achieved with the FARC dissidents. as well as the possibility that Iván Márquez may have a new opportunity to negotiate with the Government.
“Peace will always be criticized. I have not heard, at some point in the history of Colombia, where peace is not criticized, and I think that what needs to be criticized the most is the war. If we manage to get all the people in Colombia to abandon the path of arms, we will be building a great nation,” Petro said when asked about rapprochement with dissidents.
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This statement was given from Borough Hall Queenswhere the president was received by about 150 Colombians with flags, banners and harangues of support.
Prior to this tour, Petro held a meeting with the Secretary of the United Nations, António Guterres, with whom he addressed different issues, including the fight against drugs.
“I expressed to him the absolute failure of the drug war policy,” said the president when also referring to the figures that this policy has left over the years in America and the world.
And added that “There are millions of deaths and hundreds of detainees in Latin America and the United States who are not from the war on drugs, but it is a balance that has only left increasingly powerful mafia organizations as beneficiaries, which has destroyed democracies and has destroyed life on the continent.”
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Petro indicated that he also spoke to Guterres about “the need to unify Latin America in a different position from the one it has had up to now and to pave the way for a great world discussion about the fact that, instead of investing public money in murder, death, democratic destruction, it is better to dedicate them to prevention so that these youth do not take the path of consumption and so that our countries are not destroyed”.
In this way, The president is now getting ready for his speech before the plenary session of the United Nations on Tuesday, where he will be the fifth president to speak out, in this case with his call to take action in the face of the climate crisis.