Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Friday said he would see Venezuela’s interim leader Delcy Rodriguez in Caracas on April 24, in what would be a first visit by a major Latin American leader since the US ouster of Nicolas Maduro.
After a previous meeting in Colombia was cancelled last month, “I will go to Caracas on April 24,” Petro told Spanish public broadcaster RTVE and news agency EFE during a live interview in Barcelona.
“If Mohammed doesn’t come to me, I go to the mountain, and so I will go to Caracas,” he said.
Rodriguez was due to travel to the Colombian border town of Cucuta in March for a summit with Petro, which was supposed to mark a thaw in relations between the South American neighbours.
But the event was cancelled at the last minute. Petro said during his interview that Rodriguez alleged “security problems”, which he thought “was an excessive amount of fear”.
The area around Cucuta is home to numerous drug-running left-wing guerrilla groups, which Colombia has long accused Venezuela of funding and protecting.
Rodriguez took charge in Venezuela after a lightning US military raid on Caracas on January 3 captured strongman socialist president Maduro and brought him to New York to face drug trafficking charges.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has since backed Rodriguez’s interim government, which has opened Venezuela’s oil industry to foreign investment, sacked officials accused of corruption and released scores of political prisoners.
Petro fiercely criticised the US operation and has long been vilified by Trump, who accuses Colombia’s first-ever leftist president of not doing enough to combat drug production.
