Colombia expels Argentine diplomats after Milei called Petro a “terrorist murderer”

The Government of Colombia announced this Wednesday that it is expelling Argentine diplomats from the country. He does so after the president of that country, Javier Milei, called his counterpart Gustavo Petro a “terrorist murderer” in an interview with journalist Andrés Oppenheimer for CNN. In it, Milei suggested that Colombia, under Petro's mandate, can follow in the footsteps of Venezuela or Cuba: “The carnage that is Venezuela is truly unheard of (sic), the same as the prison island of Cuba. Then there are other cases that are on the way to… right? Let's say, like the case of Colombia with Mr. Petro, let's say... well, you can't expect much from someone who was a terrorist murderer, right? Communist".

At the end of the afternoon this Wednesday, the Colombian ambassador in Buenos Aires, Camilo Romero, assured that a response was being prepared: “The Colombian Government is exploring all measures. Decisions will be announced soon,” he said. The consequence was verified minutes later, through a brief official statement from the Colombian Foreign Ministry in which it points out what happened and remembers that it has precedents in other insulting criticisms by Milei of Petro. “The expressions of the Argentine president have deteriorated the confidence of our nation, in addition to offending the dignity of President Petro, who was democratically elected,” the document states. “The Government of Colombia orders the expulsion of diplomats from the Argentine Embassy in Colombia. The scope of this decision will be communicated to the Argentine Embassy through diplomatic institutional channels,” the statement concludes.

Milei's disqualification of Petro was added to the one he issued in the same interview against the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador: “That an ignorant person like López Obrador speaks badly of me exalts me.” At the meeting, the Argentine also reaffirmed his position as an ally of the Government of Israel and of his incursion into the Gaza Strip, another of the many positions that separate him from both Petro and López Obrador. “Everything it is doing is being done within the rules of the game, Israel is not committing a single excess,” he stated.

Milei's attack on Petro means a new chapter in the disagreements between both leaders. When he was still a candidate for the presidency, the Argentine, in a provocative tone, said in an interview with Colombian radio RCN: “What is a socialist, deep down? He is trash, he is human excrement.” Petro responded by writing in his X profile that that was something the German dictator Adolf Hitler said. The ultraliberal economist replied in turn: “Those are part of the decadence.”

[This is a developing story. More information will be available shortly.]

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