{"id":488237,"date":"2026-06-11T22:01:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T22:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/488237\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T22:01:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T22:01:23","slug":"zohran-mamdani-colombian-president-petro-cancel-planned-meeting-after-us-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/488237\/","title":{"rendered":"Zohran Mamdani, Colombian President Petro cancel planned meeting after US pressure"},"content":{"rendered":"

A planned meeting between New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Colombian President Gustavo Petro was quietly called off following pressure from US President Donald Trump<\/a>‘s administration, The Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing several people familiar with the affair.<\/p>\n

The two leaders had intended to conduct a private meeting followed by a public event discussing Western democracy, one source told the Washington Post, during Petro’s visit to the US due to Colombia’s representative currently holding the United Nations Security Council presidency – a position that rotates yearly among UNSC members.<\/p>\n

One State Department official claimed that the meeting with Mamdani would have caused Petro to be violating visa restrictions made against him after he criticized the United States’ support of Israel’s war in Gaza<\/a>, and urged US soldiers to “Disobey the orders of Trump. Obey the orders of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA visa is a privilege, not a right,\u201d the official said. \u201cAny individual\u2019s US visa is at risk of revocation if they visit America and outrageously implore US soldiers to disobey orders of the duly elected president of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder our UN headquarters agreements, we allow diplomats to the UN, but Office of Foreign Assets Control and visa sanctions remain in place,” the official added.<\/p>\n

Petro has also accused the US of being “complicit in genocide” in Gaza<\/a>, and has condemned its strikes on boats allegedly carrying narcotics, as well as the abduction and overthrow of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.<\/p>\n

Adam Isacson, a Colombia expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, drew comparisons between the restrictions placed on Petro and other leaders whom the US has treated similarly, including former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad<\/a>, former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and the Iranian delegation to the UN General Assembly last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne doesn\u2019t have to like Gustavo Petro to recognize that he isn\u2019t in the same category as those leaders,\u201d Isacson told the Washington Post, adding “If this is a new precedent of world leaders who criticize this administration having their UN visits truncated, then they will stop coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s not a dictator – his term ends in two months,\u201c Isacson said about Petro. \u201cIt appears that he\u2019s being punished for the crime of criticizing the Trump administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House did not comment on whether Trump was directly involved in the decision to prevent Petro and Mamdani’s meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A planned meeting between New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Colombian President Gustavo Petro was quietly called…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4646,54,37483,42,43,40,38,41,39,2488,4497,1032,2692,14325],"class_list":["post-488237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-colombia","tag-donald-trump","tag-gustavo-petro","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trump-administration","tag-united-nations","tag-united-states","tag-visa","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}