Washington, Apr 20 (EFE).- The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, reiterated this Thursday in Washington that his country will not deliver to Ukraine weapons acquired in the past from Russia.
“Previous governments bought Russian weapons quite a long time ago. My position on these weapons, today in the power of the Colombian State, is that they are not going to war. They are neither going to Russia nor are they going to Ukraine, ”he said in statements to the press outside the Oval Office after meeting with US President Joe Biden.
Petro had already pointed out on January 24 that he preferred that the old Russian weapons bought by his country remain as “scrap” on his land rather than give them to kyiv.
“Our Constitution has peace as an order in the international arena. It will remain as scrap metal in Colombia”, but it will not deliver Russian weapons”, he said then in the framework of the VII Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), held in Buenos Aires.
The Colombian president stressed that day that Latin America, “instead of playing in which military bloc remains” with respect to NATO or Russia, “must demand peace” and that “the pertinent dialogues be built” so that “this war can be finish”.
Peace was precisely one of the points that he contemplated addressing in his meeting with Biden at the White House: “Democracy, freedom and peace constitute the common agenda,” he said at the beginning of that bilateral meeting.
That meeting was the highlight of the US tour of Petro, who on Monday spoke at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, at the UN headquarters in New York; on Tuesday he was at Stanford University in San Francisco (California) and on Wednesday he gave a speech before the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS), in Washington.
