At White House, Trump says Colombia’s Petro is ‘great,’ defying expectations

Many feared the worst from Tuesday’s meeting between President Donald Trump and President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, the first face-to-face encounter between two leaders known for speaking their minds.

For a year, the two had been engaged in a war of words and ideology, and Trump has used White House visits to ambush foreign leaders and flex his power. Colombia is also the world’s primary source of cocaine, and Trump has vowed to crush transnational drug trafficking networks, some of which have bases in Colombia.

But after a private meeting that lasted more than two hours, the first images emerged: the two leaders smiling broadly, flanked by top officials; then a photo with a note from Trump saying “I love Colombia” and a signed copy for Petro of “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” with a dedication: “You are great.”

Colombians — from the embassy in Washington to the streets of Bogotá, the capital — seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

“By the blessing of God, the meeting was a complete success! Long live Colombia,” said Oscar Gamboa, a diplomat, in a text message to The New York Times, adding a Colombian flag emoji.

In a news conference after the White House visit, Petro said he had emerged feeling “optimistic and positive,” though he said the Caribbean was now the “eye of the storm” of U.S. foreign policy. (Colombia and Venezuela both have long Caribbean coasts from where some drugs bound for the United States leave.)

Petro’s remarks, at the Colombian Embassy in Washington, revolved around what Petro described as a “difficult” moment for Colombia and Venezuela. He said he had proposed to Trump renewing Colombia’s bond with the United States by jointly cracking down on drug-trafficking groups active on both sides of the Colombian-Venezuelan border and through investing in clean energy that could supply both countries with electricity.

Trump, for his part, said that he had a good meeting with Petro. When asked if the two had come to any agreement on counternarcotic efforts, Trump told reporters at the White House, “We worked on it, and we got along very well.”

There had been good reason to believe the two presidents could clash Tuesday, experts said. Petro has taken on Trump on everything from deportations to the U.S. military’s boat strikes against what the Trump administration has said are drug traffickers.

U.S. officials revoked Petro’s visa last fall and imposed sanctions on him, along with members of his family and his government. The U.S. government issued Petro a short-term visa for this week’s trip to the capital.

In an interview with a Colombian radio station after the meeting, Petro rated it a “9” on a scale of 1 to 10 and said “not even a second” had been spent discussing the sanctions or his visa issues.

After the meeting, Trump said that in addition to counternarcotics, the two were “working on some other things too, including sanctions.”

It was an unexpected turnaround from the state of affairs just a month ago.

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