Washington, Dec 2 (EFE).- United States President Donald Trump warned on Tuesday that any country that produces and traffics drugs into the US “is subject to attack,” suggesting that he could also include Colombia in the ground operations against drug trafficking with which he is threatening Venezuela.
”I hear the country of Colombia is making cocaine, they have cocaine manufacturing plants… Anybody that’s doing that and selling it into our country is subject to attack,” Trump told reporters during a meeting with his Cabinet at the White House.
The president, who reiterated that attacks against drug cartels within Venezuelan territory will begin “very soon,” insisted that although “Venezuela has been very bad. Venezuela has been really bad in something else, probably worse than most. But a lot of other people do it too.”
Potential attacks on Venezuelan soil would mean an expansion of Operation Southern Spear, which has destroyed 21 vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since September, extrajudicially killing 82 people, who the US government has alleged were drug traffickers, the Pentagon reported Tuesday.
The US military deployment in Caribbean waters, one of the largest in recent decades, has increased pressure on the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump accuses of leading the shadowy Cartel of the Suns, designated by Washington as a foreign terrorist organization.
In October, Trump also strongly criticized his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, calling him a “drug trafficking leader,” and suspended US aid to that country for its alleged inaction in the fight against drugs.
Petro denies the accusations and has called Trump “rude and ignorant toward Colombia.”
He has also rejected the US military deployment as “interference” and denounced the attacks against alleged drug boats, some of them carried out in the eastern Pacific, near the Colombian coast.
In front of his Cabinet, Trump once again defended the legality of these operations and warned that the country has the right to defend itself against the “wave of drugs” that the cartels send to the US.
Petro invites Trump to Colombia
Petro responded to Trump’s declarations on Tuesday by inviting him to visit the country and show him how cocaine laboratories are destroyed.
”Come to Colombia, Mr. Trump, I invite you to participate in the destruction of the nine laboratories we destroy every day to prevent cocaine from reaching the United States,” Petro said on his Twitter account.
“Without missiles, I have destroyed 18,400 laboratories during my administration. Come with me, and I will show you how they are destroyed, one laboratory every 40 minutes, but do not threaten our sovereignty, because you will awaken the Jaguar,” added Petro, who identifies with that American feline.
The Colombian president’s US visa was canceled in September, and he was included in October by the US Treasury Department on the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) after the US government accused him of being a “drug trafficking leader.”
Regarding these sanctions, Petro pointed out: “You have already slandered me, don’t continue down that path. If any country has helped to stop thousands of tons of cocaine from being consumed by Americans, it is Colombia,” concluded the president.
The 2024 annual report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) noted that coca cultivation in Colombia reached a record 253,000 hectares in 2023, and cocaine production skyrocketed 53% to 2,600 tons. EFE
EFE
ygg-asb-joc/mcd
