Peru definitively withdraws its ambassador to Colombia after accusing Petro of "interference"

Colombian President Gustavo Petro last Saturday at the Ibero-American Summit in Santo Domingo. Mauricio Duenas Castaneda (EFE)

The Peruvian government announced on Wednesday the definitive withdrawal of its ambassador in Colombia, attributing its decision to some comments by the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, which he described as "interfering and offensive."

The Executive headed by Dina Boluarte since last December affirmed that the president of the neighboring country "persists in distorting reality" by not recognizing that former president Pedro Castillo carried out a failed self-coup on December 7.

Petro assured last Saturday during the XXVIII Ibero-American Summit held in Santo Domingo that Castillo should have been at the meeting, not in jail.

“Today it should be here, they took it out.

He is in prison, ”he launched before the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Peru, Ana Cecilia Gervasi.

She is she replied shortly after: “If Pedro Castillo is not here it is because he carried out a coup.

If he were, they would have a dictator ”.

With the withdrawal of the ambassador, Peru confirms its tendency to isolation as far as foreign policy is concerned.

If Congress had already declared the Colombian president persona non grata, this time the Executive made a more drastic decision.

The measure, added the Foreign Ministry, is due precisely to the fact that Petro questioned the failed coup attempt by former President Castillo last December.

The statement notes that Petro's pronouncements "have seriously deteriorated the historic relationship of friendship, cooperation and mutual respect that has existed between Peru and Colombia."

Diplomatic relations between the two neighboring countries will now be reduced to business managers, just as relations between Mexico and Peru have been.

At the end of February, Boluarte announced the definitive dismissal of Manuel Gerardo Talavera Espinar, until then the Peruvian ambassador in Mexico.

The reason is the same, due to the statements of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

That time, Boluarte was emphatic: “I strongly reject the expressions made by the President of Mexico regarding the internal affairs of Peru and his unacceptable questions that he repeatedly formulates about the constitutional and democratic origin of my Government.

Mr. López has decided to support the coup d'état by former President Pedro Castillo, the same one that generated the unanimous rejection of the institutions that make up the democratic order in Peru.

The tension with Colombia has been increasing in the last three months, in the midst of the protests against the new Peruvian government.

The statement that tightened the rope the most was when Petro said that the Peruvian Police "marched like a Nazi against their people."

Then it was Congress that ruled against him.

The statement from the Foreign Ministry ends by requesting that the waters be calmed: "Peru wishes that the close and bicentennial bilateral relationship with Colombia resume its course within the framework of mutual respect and the norms, principles and values ​​that govern coexistence between the state".

Petro, however, in all this time has not given a single sign of ceasing his support for the rural teacher Pedro Castillo, now in jail.

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