The US military strike on Venezuela that unseated its leader Nicolas Maduro could ripple out into a “catastrophe” for the whole of Latin America, Colombia’s deputy foreign minister told AFP on Wednesday.
“If there is a major humanitarian crisis, the impact, the devastation will be unstoppable… We are talking about a catastrophe that Latin America has never seen,” Mauricio Jaramillo said in an interview in Bogota.
Colombia and its first-ever leftist president, Gustavo Petro, have consistently criticized Washington’s mass naval deployment in Latin America, its bombing of alleged drug-smuggling boats, seizure of Venezuelan oil tankers, and Saturday’s surgical extraction of Maduro.
The censure from Bogota has irritated President Donald Trump, who has accused Petro of being a drug baron, and warned him Saturday to “watch his ass.”
Colombia shares a porous 2,200-kilometer (1,370-mile) border with Venezuela and has been the major recipient of migrants fleeing the economic and political crisis there.
Jaramillo said Colombia could never be “fully prepared in the event there is a degradation brought about by war” especially at a time Latin America is split on Trump’s actions.
While rightwing governments in Argentina and Ecuador have backed Maduro’s toppling, leftists in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and others have firmly condemned it.
“That division obviously undermines a regional solution… Without shared premises and minimum consensus, it’s obviously very difficult to respond at the regional level,” said Jaramillo.
He added that while a US military attack on Colombia seemed “unlikely,” the country would have a “legitimate” response if needed.
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© Agence France-Presse
