Colombia’s president escalated tensions with Washington on Monday, warning that he would personally resist any American military action against his country after President Trump publicly hinted that Bogotá could be next in a broader anti-drug campaign.

The sharp exchange followed a dramatic U.S. operation over the weekend that led to the arrest of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro, an event that Trump cited while suggesting Colombia and its leader could face similar pressure.

In a message posted online, President Gustavo Petro invoked Colombia’s history of conflict and peace, saying he would abandon a long-held personal pledge if the nation were attacked. “I swore not to touch a weapon again since the 1989 Peace Pact, but for the homeland, I will take up arms again,” Petro wrote on X.

He went on to frame the confrontation as a popular struggle rather than a personal one. “Know that you are facing a commander of the people. Free Colombian forever,” he added.

Petro said the Colombian military and security services had been instructed to protect the country’s leadership and population from any foreign incursion, stating that forces had orders to fire on “the invader.”

Responding to Trump’s rhetoric, the left-wing president insisted that his administration has been actively battling narcotics trafficking and warned that an attack on Colombia’s government would only strengthen criminal organizations. He argued that destabilizing the state would hand an advantage to the very cartels the U.S. claims to be fighting.

Petro also cautioned that airstrikes against drug groups would have devastating civilian consequences, accusing cartels of operating among noncombatants. “If you bomb even one of these groups without sufficient intelligence, you will kill many children,” Petro said. “If you bomb peasants, thousands of guerrillas will return in the mountains.

“And if you arrest the president whom a good part of my people want and respect, you will unleash the popular jaguar,” he added, using a metaphor for mass unrest among Colombians.

The Colombian leader’s remarks came after Trump warned that Petro should “watch” himself in the aftermath of the U.S. raid in Caracas that captured Maduro and his wife.

Petro had publicly denounced that operation and urged the United Nations Security Council to convene an emergency session to address Maduro’s detention.

Trump, for his part, intensified the feud by branding Petro “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States,” a claim the Colombian president flatly rejected.

Petro dismissed any suggestion of ties to drug cartels and said his finances are fully transparent, insisting he has no involvement with criminal networks.

In a final warning, Petro turned his attention inward, cautioning members of Colombia’s security establishment against siding with Washington. “Every soldier of Colombia has an order from now on: every commander of the public force who prefers the flag of the US to the flag of Colombia must immediately withdraw from the institution by order of the bases and the troops and mine,” Petro said.

{Matzav.com}

Jooish News

Jooish News