Spanish
Bogotá.- The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, urged this Friday his counterpart in the United States, Donald Trump, to distance himself from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he held responsible for missile attacks in the escalation of war in the Middle East.
Petro made those statements during an intervention in Chicago (USA), where he participated in the funeral events of Reverend Jesse Jackson, a historical African-American leader and central figure of the civil rights movement in the United States.
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"Today is the moment for the President of the United States (...) to be able to completely separate himself from whoever is leading him and humanity to an abyss", stated the Colombian president in his speech in Spanish, which was acclaimed by many of the attendees, who even stood up to applaud him.
Petro asked the US ruler to distance himself from those who, according to him, "launch missiles against boys and girls on planet Earth", referring to the military offensive in the Middle East, which in recent days has intensified after the attacks initiated last Saturday by the United States and Israel against Iran. The leader made these reflections when paying tribute to Jackson, whom he described as "a living symbol of the struggle for freedom" of Afro-descendant peoples in the Americas. Jackson, a close collaborator of Martin Luther King Jr. and two-time candidate for the U.S. Presidency, passed away on February 17th after suffering from progressive supranuclear palsy. During the ceremony, Petro sat in the front row in front of Jackson's coffin, while in the adjacent row were former US Vice President Kamala Harris; former President Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; as well as former presidents Barack Obama (2009-2017) and Joe Biden (2021-2025).
