US to revoke Colombian president's visa

WASHINGTON: The US State Department said Friday it would revoke the visa of Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro for his “incendiary actions” during a pro-Palestinian street protest in New York.

“Earlier today, Colombian president @petrogustavo stood on a NYC street and urged US soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence,” the State Department said in a post on X.

“We will revoke Petro’s visa due to his reckless and incendiary actions,” it said.

On his social media account, Petro shared video of himself speaking Spanish to a large crowd through a megaphone Friday, with his translator then relaying his comments calling on “nations of the world” to contribute soldiers for an army “larger than that of the United States.”

“That is why, from here in New York, I ask all soldiers in the United States Army not to point their rifles at humanity. Disobey Trump’s order! Obey the order of humanity!” Petro said.

A source from the president’s office confirmed to AFP that Petro was traveling to Bogota on Friday night.

Petro has said he has Italian citizenship and would not need a visa to enter the United States.

Petro was in New York for the UN General Assembly, where he rebuked the Trump administration fiercely and called for a criminal inquiry into recent US strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean in his Tuesday address.

Petro said unarmed “poor young people” died in the strikes — more than a dozen in total — but Washington contends the actions are part of a US anti-drug operation off the coast of Venezuela, whose president Washington accuses of running a cartel.

Trump has dispatched eight warships and a submarine to the southern Caribbean, and the biggest US deployment in years has raised fears in Venezuela of an invasion.

Petro, whose country is the world’s biggest cocaine producer, has said he suspects some of those killed in the US boat strikes were Colombian.

Last week, the Trump administration decertified Colombia as an ally in the fight against drugs, but stopped short of economic sanctions.

The countries are historical allies, but ties have soured under Petro — Colombia’s first-ever leftist leader.

The South American country’s Interior Minister Armando Benedetti wrote on X Friday night that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visa should have been revoked rather than Petro’s.

“But since the empire protects him, it’s taking it out on the only president who was capable enough to tell him the truth to his face.”