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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
While rightwing governments in Argentina and Ecuador have backed Maduro’s toppling, leftists in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and others have firmly condemned it.<\/p>\n
“That division obviously undermines a regional solution… Without shared premises and minimum consensus, it\u2019s obviously very difficult to respond at the regional level,” said Jaramillo.<\/p>\n
He added that while a US military attack on Colombia seemed “unlikely,” the country would have a “legitimate” response if needed.<\/p>\n
bur-lv\/als\/mr\/mlr\/dw<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23831,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"7","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[338,95,101,144,819],"class_list":["post-23830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-colombia","tag-conflict","tag-diplomacy","tag-us-en","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23833,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23830\/revisions\/23833"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}