Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos will meet with US President Donald Trump and Latin American counterparts to discuss the ongoing crisis in Venezuela during an informal summit on Monday, the White House said.
Santos and the presidents of Peru, Panama and Brazil will meet Trump while all are attending the United Nations’ General Assembly in New York.
The leaders will be discussing the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, whose government is the hemisphere’s fiercest US critic and has become increasingly authoritarian amid a devastating economic and political crisis.
The Colombian president has yet to confirm the meeting.
Latin American leaders attending the meeting with Trump
- Michel Temer (Brazil)
- Juan Manuel Santos (Colombia)
- Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (Peru)
- Juan Carlos Varela (Panama)
White House Director of Media Affairs, Helen Aguirre Ferre, told Spanish news agency EFE that the US government is concerned the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is destabilizing the region.
The American official said Trump is pursuing a “peaceful solution” to the crisis in cooperation with the Organization of American States (OAS).
The situation in Venezuela has caused a rift between Trump and the US’ traditional allies in the region.
The US president had earlier said he was considering military intervention, a possibility unanimously rejected by Latin American counterparts.
Governments across the Americas have been calling on the Venezuelan government and opposition to initiate talks to bridge the gap in Colombia’s neighbor to the east.
The rift between the White House and Colombia’s presidential palace has possibly been most visible with Trump proposing to cut aid for an ongoing peace process and threatening to “decertify” Colombia as an ally in counter-narcotics efforts.