BARCELONA, April 17 (Reuters) – Colombian President Gustavo Petro said on Friday that he will travel to Caracas on April 24, amid attempts to meet with Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodriguez.
Petro said in an interview on Spanish national broadcaster RTVE that, following an attempted meeting with Rodriguez in a Colombian town on the border between the two countries — which did not take place due to security concerns — he will be traveling to the Venezuelan capital in April.
Rodriguez had planned to meet Petro in mid-March in what would have been their first bilateral meeting as presidents, but the meeting was canceled due to what both governments described as a case of “force majeure”, without giving further details at the time.
“The meeting at the border fell through because of certain precautions, she said there were security issues,” Petro explained during Friday’s interview.
Petro is in Barcelona taking part in the so-called “Global Progressive Mobilisation”, a two-day gathering of global leftist leaders organised by Spain and left-wing political networks that aims to mobilise these movements against the far right.
(Reporting by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez and Emma Pinedo; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
