Colombian President Ready to 'Pick Up Arms' in Face of Trump Threat

Colombian President Gustavo Petro at the 2025 UN General Assembly. (Wikimedia Commons/Official Photograph of the Presidency of Colombia)

JAKARTA - Colombian President Gustavo Petro said on Monday he was ready to "pick up arms" against threats from his counterpart in the United States, Donald Trump, who last weekend captured the leader of neighboring Venezuela in a military attack.

President Petro, a former guerrilla who for months has been the target of insults and threats from President Trump, said on X: "I swear not to touch a gun again, but for the homeland, I will pick up a gun again," AFP reported (6/1).

Earlier, President Trump said over the weekend that President Petro should "be careful," describing the first leftist leader of Colombia as a "sick person who likes to make cocaine and sell it to the United States."

President Petro, whose urban guerrilla group M-19 was disarmed under a 1989 peace deal, has traded barbs with President Trump since the Republican returned to the White House in January 2024.

President Petro has been a vocal critic of US military deployments in the Caribbean, which began with the blowing up of ships suspected of carrying drugs, before expanding to the seizure of Venezuelan oil tankers, then a raid on Saturday in Caracas to arrest President Nicolas Maduro.

President Trump accused the Colombian leader, without providing evidence, of being involved in the drug trade and imposed financial sanctions on him and his family.

Washington also removed Colombia from a list of countries certified as allies in the US war on drugs.

In a lengthy message on X, President Petro stressed that his anti-narcotics policy was strong enough, but emphasized that there were limits to how aggressively the military could act.

"If you bomb even one of these groups without enough intelligence, you will kill many children. If you bomb farmers, thousands of people will turn into guerrillas in the mountains. And if you detain the president, who is loved and respected by most of my people, you will release the people's jaguar," said President Petro.

The Trump administration is close to the right-wing opposition in Colombia, which has high hopes of winning this year's legislative and presidential elections.