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White House Press Pool Reports @WHPressPool - Backgrounder: President Gustavo Petro’s Visit to the White House
Good morning,
My name is Cristobal Vasquez, and I am your foreign pooler for the visit of Colombian President Gustavo Petro Urrego to the White House. The bilateral meeting in the Oval Office is scheduled to begin at 11:00 a.m. and is currently closed to the press; however, this remains subject to change.
Following the meeting, President Petro will hold a news conference at the Colombian Embassy in D.C. The briefing is scheduled to start at 3:30 p.m. This is the first time President Gustavo Petro and President Donald Trump have met in person.
The Colombian delegation includes:
Rosa Yolanda Villavicencio , Minister of Foreign Relations
Pedro Arnulfo Sánchez Suárez , Minister of Defense
Aramando Benedetti, Minister of Interior
Ricardo Roa, President of Ecopetrol, Colombia’s state owned company.
René Guarín, director of the National Intelligence Directorate
Gloria Miranda, director of the illicit crop substitution program in Colombia
Agenda - Talking Points
Ahead of the meeting, on Jan. 23, Colombian Foreign Minister Rosa Yolanda Villavicencio Mapy and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a call to prepare for the visit.
According to a statement (https://x.com/ColombiaEmbUSA/status/2014731848597819735?s=20) published by the Colombian government, topics for discussion reportedly include regional security cooperation, counternarcotics efforts (specifically the fight against transnational organized crime in border areas), and shared economic opportunities.
Colombian officials view the visit as a strategic opening to demonstrate the effectiveness of their counternarcotics initiatives to a skeptical White House.
According to leaked information from El País (https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-11-18/3000-tons-of-cocaine-the-controversial-figure-that-pits-colombia-against-the-united-nations.html#:~:text=The%20cocaine%20production%20figure%2C%20which,were%20potentially%20produced%20in%202024.) regarding the latest UNODC figures (to be included in the World Drug Report 2025 (https://unodc.org/documents/data
-and-analysis/WDR_2025/WDR25_B1_Key_findings.pdf) ), potential cocaine production reached 3,001 tons in 2024. This figure represents a 12.6% increase from the previous year—a growth rate that has been slowing, as the UN report acknowledges.
In 2023, the country accounted for 67% of the world’s coca cultivation, totaling 253,000 hectares—a record high that nonetheless showed a decelerating growth rate compared to previous years.
Despite this deceleration, President Petro has questioned the UN’s metrics and has so far declined to officially release the updated figures. “Why would the government publish data that is wrong?” a Colombian official told El País. The official noted that the UN agency acknowledged “budgetary and security” limitations in its measurements and is currently negotiating a methodology review with the Colombian Ministry of Justice.
Since 1999, the UNODC has served as the definitive authority for tracking Colombian coca cultivation, releasing annual data on both total hectares planted and potential cocaine output.
To counter the cultivation data, President Petro will provide records of high seizure and interdiction rates under his administration. From Aug. 7, 2022, to Dec. 31, 2025, Colombian authorities seized 2,840,685 kg of cocaine, destroyed 18,135 laboratories, and made 164,525 arrests during 1,426 combats and 13 bombings.
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