Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Monday he was ready to “take up arms” in the face of threats from US counterpart Donald Trump, who over the weekend seized the leader of neighbouring Venezuela in a military strike.

Petro, a former guerrilla who for months been the target of insults and threats from Trump, said on X: “I swore not to touch a weapon again… but for the homeland I will take up arms again.”

Trump said over the weekend that Petro should “watch his ass” and described Colombia’s first-ever leftist leader as “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.”

Petro, whose M-19 urban guerrilla group disarmed under a 1989 peace agreement, has traded barbs with Trump ever since the Republican’s return to the White House in January.

Petro has been a vocal critic of the US military deployment in the Caribbean, which began with blowing up of alleged drug boats, before expanding to seizure of Venezuelan oil tankers, then Saturday’s raid on Caracas to seize President Nicolas Maduro.

Trump accused the Colombian leader, without providing evidence, of being involved in drug trafficking and hit him and his family with financial sanctions.

Washington also removed Colombia from a list of countries certified as allies in the US war on drugs.

In a long message on X, Petro insisted that his anti-narcotics policy is sufficiently robust, but stressed there were limits to how aggressive the military can be.

“If you bomb even one of these groups without sufficient intelligence, you will kill many children. If you bomb peasants, thousands will turn into guerrillas in the mountains. And if you detain the president, whom a good part of my people love and respect, you will unleash the popular jaguar,” he wrote.

The Trump administration is close to the right-wing opposition in Colombia, which has high hopes of winning legislative and presidential elections this year.

AFP