Venezuela, central axis of the meeting between Biden and Petro at the White House

Venezuela will be “the central theme” of the first meeting between the Colombian president and his US counterpart, scheduled for this Thursday, April 20, at the White House.

“It is a meeting of two people who are different, obviously, who have points in common on the international agenda,” Petro told the press in recent hours.

For the first president of the left in Colombia, it is important not to leave empty-handed, before the international conference that Bogotá is hosting on April 25 on the stalled political dialogue in Venezuela.

The United States will be one of the participants in the conference. And although the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, considered “illegitimate” by Washington after disputed elections in his country, will not attend the meeting, he has given the go-ahead to that meeting.

Both members of the ruling party and the Venezuelan opposition will meet separately with Petro, days before the meeting in the Colombian capital.

Since his arrival in the United States last weekend, where he made work stops in New York and California, Petro has called for “more democracy, zero sanctions” on Venezuela.

For the first president of the left in Colombia, rapprochement with his neighboring country is essential, as he demonstrated when he reestablished bilateral relations with Caracas-shortly after assuming the leadership of the Casa de Nariño-after three years of diplomatic rupture and extensive friction with the governments of his right-wing predecessors.

In 2019, the United States and most of its allies recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president, calling Maduro’s re-election fraudulent.

This support was accompanied by sanctions to put pressure on the socialist ruler, which include direct actions against economic sectors such as oil and measures against members of the Venezuelan government that had already been imposed since 2015.

But since 2019 the regional landscape has changed a lot and Maduro’s political opponents in countries like Colombia and Brazil have been replaced by leftist presidents.

There is also a change in US policy, with an easing of sanctions and a prisoner swap last year.

Currently, Washington warns that it will maintain the sanctions until it sees “concrete steps” towards democratization and insists that its objective is “free and fair” elections in Venezuelan territory.

But the dialogue between the Maduro Administration and the opposition has been stalled since last November.

Maduro knows that his main difficulty is to make the dialogue subject to the lifting of sanctions, while the parties involved do not give in.

And that’s where Petro enters the scene, faced with the challenge of making it easier for both of them to take a step forward. This week, in New York, the Colombian leader asked Venezuela to embark on “the path of dialogue.”

Petro promotes a change in anti-drug policy

The two leaders will take the opportunity to address other priority issues, including the fight against climate change and drug trafficking, as well as migration challenges, according to White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre.

Petro, a former member of the now-defunct M-19 guerrilla group, is critical of the traditional US-backed approach to the fight against drugs. The president proposes focusing on consumption rather than production, as well as stopping what he calls “persecution” against coca growers and ceasing the extinction of illicit crops with glyphosate, due to the great damage they cause to people’s health and to the environment.

“Undoubtedly, there are differences. We believe that the war against drugs has failed. These 50 years show an absolutely disastrous balance in numbers, both here, in the United States, and in all of our Latin America,” the president said in recent hours. 63 years old.

“We want to open the discussion on this issue and how international drug policy is articulated with the growth of violence throughout the Americas and violence in Colombia,” he added.

But, in mid-March, the head of US diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean, Brian Nichols, considered it “very difficult” for Petro’s anti-drug plan to succeed if it does not eradicate crops.

“Join North American progressivism with Latin American progressivism”

This change of focus in the fight against drugs is part of the “total peace” policy with which the president aspires to put an end to more than six decades of violence in Colombia.

The Central General Staff (EMC), the largest faction of dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) – which departed from the historic 2016 peace agreement – declared its willingness to engage in dialogue with the government.

And Bogotá has already opened negotiations with the guerrillas of the self-styled National Liberation Army (ELN), which emerged in 1964 and has maintained frustrated peace talks with five governments.

Petro will also bring up the fight against climate change and the importance of a “decarbonized economy” in the meeting with Biden.

“Undoubtedly, the climate issue is a common agenda between President Biden and us,” said the Colombian president.

In this sense, Petro highlights that it is necessary to address “how to unite North American progressivism with Latin American progressivism, around a new economy that has to be the one that overcomes the climate crisis.”