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Colombian president Gustavo Petro speaks through the Basic Debate of the United Nations Basic Meeting on the UN headquarters in New York Metropolis on September 23, 2025.
Leonardo Munoz | Afp | Getty Pictures
America mentioned it could revoke Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s visa after he took to New York’s streets on Friday in a pro-Palestinian demonstration and urged U.S. troopers to disobey President Donald Trump’s orders.
“We are going to revoke Petro’s visa resulting from his reckless and incendiary actions,” the State Division posted on X.
Petro, addressing a crowd of pro-Palestinian protesters outdoors the U.N. headquarters in Manhattan, known as for a world armed drive with the precedence to liberate Palestinians, including, “This drive must be larger than that of america.”
“That is why from right here, from New York, I ask all of the troopers of the military of america to not level their weapons at folks. Disobey the orders of Trump. Obey the orders of humanity,” Petro mentioned in Spanish.
Reuters couldn’t instantly verify whether or not Petro was nonetheless in New York.
His workplace and Colombia’s overseas ministry didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
UN clashes over Gaza conflict
The Trump administration has been cracking down on pro-Palestinian voices whereas nations together with France, Britain, Australia and Canada have acknowledged a Palestinian state – strikes which have angered Israel and its ally the U.S.
Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president and a vocal opponent of Israel’s conflict in Gaza, hit out at Trump in his speech to the U.N. Basic Meeting on Tuesday, saying the U.S. chief was “complicit in genocide” in Gaza and calling for “legal proceedings” over U.S. missile assaults on suspected drug-running boats in Caribbean waters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the meeting on Friday, denounced Western nations for embracing Palestinian statehood, accusing them of sending the message that “murdering Jews pays off.”
Israel started its assault on Gaza after an assault led by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7, 2023, killed about 1,200 folks, with 251 taken hostage.
Since then, Israel’s army marketing campaign in Gaza has killed greater than 65,000 Palestinians, based on Gaza well being authorities, and displaced the whole inhabitants of the slender enclave.
A number of rights specialists say this quantities to genocide, a cost angrily denied by Israel, which says the conflict is in self-defense.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the U.N. by video on Thursday after the Trump administration mentioned it could not give him a visa to journey to New York.
Abbas’ workplace mentioned on the time that his visa ban violated the 1947 U.N. headquarters settlement, below which the U.S. is mostly required to permit entry for overseas diplomats to the U.N. Nevertheless, Washington has mentioned it might probably deny visas for safety, extremism and overseas coverage causes.
Colombia’s rocky begin with Trump
America is Colombia’s most important buying and selling associate and its biggest ally within the struggle in opposition to drug trafficking, however U.S.-Colombia relations bought off to a foul begin shortly after Trump returned to workplace in January, when Petro refused to simply accept army flights carrying deportees in Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Petro mentioned his nation’s residents had been being handled like criminals. However he rapidly reversed course, agreeing to simply accept the migrants, after each nations threatened tariffs on one another and after the U.S. canceled visa appointments for Colombians.
Trump this month put Colombia on a listing of nations that Washington says have did not uphold their counter-narcotics agreements, blaming Colombia’s political management.
Petro got here to workplace in 2022 promising agreements with armed teams however pivoted final yr, pledging to tame coca-growing areas with large social and army intervention. The technique has introduced little success.
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