BOGOTA, Colombia: US President Donald Trump is threatening that he may decertify Colombia as a partner in the drug war unless it reverses a record surge in cocaine production in the South American nation.
The shock rebuke for Washington’s staunchest ally in Latin America came Wednesday in the White House’s annual designation of nations it deems major drug producing or transit zones.
Colombia, which is source of 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the US, has long been a fixture of the list, which was unchanged from last year. But not since the late 1990s, when contributions from the Cali cartel funded the campaign of Colombia’s then-President Ernesto Samper, has its commitment to fighting narcotics trafficking been called into question by Washington.
Twenty-two countries were designated as major drug transit zones Wednesday, and only Venezuela and Bolivia were deemed once again not to be fulfilling their international obligations to combat drug production and trafficking.
The leftist governments of both those nations are hostile to the US Yet, in a statement, Trump said he “seriously considered” also decertifying Colombia because of the “extraordinary” growth of coca cultivation and cocaine production to record levels over the past year.
He said he ultimately decided against such a designation because the Colombian armed forces are close law enforcement partners with the US He also cited improving interdiction rates and the restarting of forced eradication efforts that were significantly curtailed in 2013, when President Juan Manuel Santos prioritized reaching a peace deal with leftist rebels heavily involved in the drug trade. Two years later Santos ended aerial spraying of chemicals on illicit crops, a program that had been the backbone of almost two decades and $10 billion of US counter-narcotics work in Colombia.
But Trump warned that he would keep decertification as an “option” and expected Colombia to make “significant progress” in reducing coca cultivation and cocaine production.
There was no immediate reaction from Colombian officials.
Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, described Trump’s threat as a “huge mistake” that would likely reverberate throughout a region that has long resented the US drug certification process as a throwback to the days of gunboat diplomacy.
“The message to the rest of the region is that no matter how many years you collaborate with the US, if you deviate from our preferred strategy for a moment, we’ll publicly humiliate you,” Isacson said. “They’re taking the bilateral relationship to its worst place in two decades.”
The drug certification process dates from the days of President Ronald Reagan’s war on drugs and the last time Colombia was blacklisted was the late 1990s, when cocaine was found on Samper’s presidential plane and he was nearly impeached for campaign contributions from the then-dominant Cali cartel.
Decertifying Colombia would put the country in the same rogue category as Venezuela, where several top officials have been indicted on US drug charges and whose vice president was recently sanctioned by Washington as a suspected drug kingpin.
Isacson said the threat of decertification was even more worrisome because the US expressed no similar concern over the lack of help it was receiving from far more corrupt nations on the list like Honduras, a major way station for South American cocaine working its way up by land across the border and into the US.
According to the State Department’s annual anti-narcotics report, the Central American nation didn’t carry out a single maritime interdiction last year and seized just 803 kilograms of cocaine nationwide despite more than 100 instances where the US notified authorities of suspicious activity.
By contrast, bilateral maritime counter-drug cooperation between Colombia and the US led to the seizure of more than 146 metric tons of cocaine in 2016. Overall, Colombia seized 421 metric tons last year, a 42 percent jump over 2015.
But the record drug seizures aren’t keeping pace with the explosion in cocaine production, which the US estimates surged more than 200 percent since 2013 to potentially 710 metric tons last year.
The government’s strategy to combat that trend relies heavily on the cooperation of former guerrillas. Under terms of last year’s peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the government and former insurgents are working with peasant families to try and voluntarily eradicate some 123,000 acres (50,000 hectares) of coca this year in exchange for monthly cash stipends and alternative development projects.
US officials, who still consider the disbanded FARC a terrorist organization, are skeptical the strategy will work. A senior US State Department official in Senate testimony this week accused the FARC of co-opting the peasant groups negotiating with the government and said the peace accord has had no effect on coca production trends.
“The solution to this problem is to figure out how to cut the FARC out of having any engagement either as trafficking organizations or as allegedly supporting the efforts to address the drugs issue,” William Brownfield told the US Senate’s international drug caucus.
Trump delivers shock rebuke to Colombia over cocaine surge
Trump delivers shock rebuke to Colombia over cocaine surge
Trump names former staffer Katie Miller to Musk-led DOGE panel
- Katie Miller will soon be joining DOGE! She has been a loyal supporter of mine for many years, and will bring her professional experience to Government Efficiency, Trump posts
WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday named Katie Miller, who served in Trump’s first administration and is the wife of his incoming deputy chief of staff, as one of the first members of an advisory board to be led by billionaire allies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy that aims to drastically slash government spending, federal regulations and the federal workforce.
Miller, wife of Trump’s designated homeland security adviser Stephen Miller, will join Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an informal advisory body that Trump has said will enable his administration to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.”
“Katie Miller will soon be joining DOGE! She has been a loyal supporter of mine for many years, and will bring her professional experience to Government Efficiency,” Trump posted in a message on his social media platform Truth Social.
Musk and Ramaswamy recently revealed plans to wipe out scores of federal regulations crafted by what they say is an anti-democratic, unaccountable bureaucracy, but have yet to announce members of the DOGE team. Musk has said he wants to slash the number of federal agencies from over 400 to 99.
Katie Miller had served in the first Trump adminstration as deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security and as press secretary for former Vice President Mike Pence.
She is currently a spokesperson for the transition team for Trump’s designated Health and Human Services secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr.
Panama rejects Trump’s threat to take control of Canal
- Trump also complained of China’s growing influence around the canal, a worrying trend for American interests as US businesses depend on the channel to move goods between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans
PANAMA CITY: Panama’s president Jose Raul Mulino on Sunday dismissed recent threats made by US President-elect Donald Trump to retake control of the Panama Canal over complaints of “unfair” treatment of American ships.
“Every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent areas belongs to Panama and will continue belonging to Panama,” Mulino said in a video posted to X.
Mulino’s public comments, though never mentioning Trump by name, come a day after the president-elect complained about the canal on his Truth Social platform.
“Our Navy and Commerce have been treated in a very unfair and injudicious way. The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous,” he said.
Trump also complained of China’s growing influence around the canal, a worrying trend for American interests as US businesses depend on the channel to move goods between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
“It was solely for Panama to manage, not China, or anyone else,” Trump said. “We would and will NEVER let it fall into the wrong hands!“
The Panama Canal, which was completed by the United States in 1914, was returned to the Central American country under a 1977 deal signed by Democratic president Jimmy Carter.
Panama took full control in 1999.
Trump said that if Panama could not ensure “the secure, efficient and reliable operation” of the channel, “then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question.”
Mulino rejected Trump’s claims in his video message, though he also said he hopes to have “a good and respectful relationship” with the incoming administration.
“The canal has no direct or indirect control from China, nor the European Union, nor the United States or any other power,” Mulino said. “As a Panamanian, I reject any manifestation that misrepresents this reality.”
Later on Sunday, Trump responded to Mulino’s dismissal, writing on Truth Social: “We’ll see about that!“
Musk, president? Trump says ‘not happening’
- Trump: “He wasn’t born in this country”
“He’s not gonna be president, that I can tell you,” Trump told a Republican conference in Phoenix, Arizona.
“You know why he can’t be? He wasn’t born in this country,” Trump said of the Tesla and SpaceX boss, who was born in South Africa.
The US Constitution requires that a president be a natural-born US citizen.
Trump was responding to criticism, particularly from the Democratic camp, portraying the tech billionaire and world’s richest person as “President Musk” for the outsized role he is playing in the incoming administration.
As per ceding the presidency to Musk, Trump also assured the crowd: “No, no that’s not happening.”
The influence of Musk, who will serve as Trump’s “efficiency czar,” has become a focus point for Democratic attacks, with questions raised over how an unelected citizen can wield so much power.
And there is even growing anger among Republicans after Musk trashed a government funding proposal this week in a blizzard of posts — many of them wildly inaccurate — to his more than 200 million followers on his social media platform X.
Alongside Trump, Musk ultimately helped pressure Republicans to renege on a funding bill they had painstakingly agreed upon with Democrats, pushing the United States to the brink of budgetary paralysis that would have resulted in a government shutdown just days before Christmas.
Congress ultimately reached an agreement overnight Friday to Saturday, avoiding massive halts to government services.
Russian president meets Slovak PM as Ukraine gas transit contract nears expiry
- Fico has also been a rare senior EU politician to appear on Russian state TV following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine
MOSCOW: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin met Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in the Kremlin on Sunday, a rare visit by a European Union leader to Moscow as a contract allowing for Russian gas to transit through Ukraine nears expiry.
Slovakia is dependent on gas passing through its neighbor Ukraine, and it has ramped up efforts to maintain those flows from 2025 while criticizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for refusing to extend the contract expiring at the end of the year.
Fico’s trip to Moscow was only the third by an EU government head since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Slovak opposition politicians called the visit a “disgrace.”
Fico said on Facebook after the meeting that top EU officials were informed of his trip on Friday.
He said it came in response to talks last week with Zelensky, who, according to the Slovak leader, had expressed opposition to any gas transit through Ukraine to Slovakia.
“Russian President V. Putin confirmed the readiness of the (Russian Federation) to continue to supply gas to the West and Slovakia, which is practically impossible after Jan. 1, 2025 in view of the stance of the Ukrainian president,” Fico said.
Fico came to power in 2023 and shifted Slovakia’s foreign policy. He immediately stopped state military aid to Kyiv, has said the war with Russia does not have a military solution, and has criticized sanctions against Moscow.
His visit to the Kremlin follows Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who visited in April 2022, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who went to Moscow last July. EU allies had criticized both of those visits.
Russian television showed Putin and Fico shaking hands at the start of their talks. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the meeting had been arranged a few days ago.
In the talks, Fico said he and Putin exchanged opinions on the military situation in Ukraine, chances of a peaceful end to the war and on Slovak-Russian relations “which I intend to standardise.”
GAS TRANSIT
Slovakia, which has a long-term contract with Russia’s Gazprom, has been trying to keep receiving gas through Ukraine, saying buying elsewhere would cost it 220 million euros ($229 million) more in transit expenses.
Ukraine has repeatedly refused to extend the transit deal.
Fico pushed the subject on Thursday at a EU summit that was also attended by Zelensky, who reiterated his country would not continue the transit of Russian gas.
The Slovak prime minister, who has said his country was facing a gas crisis, has also spoken of solutions under which Ukraine would not transit Russian-owned gas, but rather gas owned by someone else.
Hungary has also been keen to keep the Ukrainian route, but it will continue to receive Russian gas from the south, via the TurkStream pipeline on the bed of the Black Sea.
Ex-Soviet Moldova has also relied on gas transiting Ukraine to supply its needs and those of its separatist Transdniestria enclave, including a thermal plant that provides most of the electricity for parts of Moldova under government control.
The acting head of Moldovagaz, the country’s gas operator, Vadim Ceban, said it could provide gas for Transdniestria acquired from other sources. But the pro-Russian region would have to pay higher prices associated with those supplies.
Ceban said Moldovagaz had made several appeals to Gazprom to send gas to Moldova through TurkStream and Bulgaria and Romania.
Ho Chi Minh City celebrates first metro
HO CHI MINH CITY: Thousands of selfie-taking Ho Chi Minh City residents crammed into train carriages Sunday as the traffic-clogged business hub celebrated the opening of its first-ever metro line after years of delays.
Huge queues spilled out of every station along the $1.7 billion line that runs almost 20 kilometers from the city center — with women in traditional “ao dai” dress, soldiers in uniform and couples clutching young children waiting excitedly to board.
“I know it (the project) is late, but I still feel so very honored and proud to be among the first on this metro,” said office worker Nguyen Nhu Huyen after snatching a selfie in her jam-packed train car.
“Our city is now on par with the other big cities of the world,” she said.
It took 17 years for Vietnam’s commercial capital to reach this point. The project, funded largely by Japanese government loans, was first approved in 2007 and slated to cost just $668 million.
When construction began in 2012, authorities promised the line would be up and running in just five years.
But as delays mounted, cars and motorbikes multiplied in the city of nine million people, making the metropolis hugely congested, increasingly polluted and time-consuming to navigate.
The metro “meets the growing travel needs of residents and contributes to reducing traffic congestion and environmental pollution,” the city’s deputy mayor Bui Xuan Cuong said.
Cuong admitted authorities had to overcome “countless hurdles” to get the project over the line.
