Colombia’s foreign minister to meet with US counterpart: report

Maria Angela Holguin (Image credit: Foreign Ministry)

Colombia’s foreign minister will meet with her American counterpart on Monday in the second top bilateral meeting between the two governments in a week, diplomatic sources told local media.

Blu Radio reported that Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin will meet Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Monday afternoon, three days after Vice-President Oscar Naranjo met with his counterpart Mike Pence.



The radio station did not report on the content of the second bilateral meeting in three days.

The meetings are taking place amid mutual efforts to coordinate counter-narcotics efforts, a peace process in the South American country and a crisis in neighboring Venezuela.

The two traditional allies have clashed on a number of occasions since US President Donald Trump took office earlier this year.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos was among the first to reject possible US military intervention in Venezuela after Trump proposed this possibility.

The two traditional allies have also clashed about strategies to curb drug trafficking between Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine producer, and the US, the world’s largest consumer of the illicit drug.

Trump threatened to decertify Colombia as a cooperative partner in the so-called war on drugs after Santos called it “more harmful than all other wars combined.”

Both countries have been combating cocaine trafficking for decades, but with limited results and at a major human cost.

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