PANAMA CITY: Colombia has authorized joint military operations with the United States to target drug traffickers, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday, expanding Washington's campaign against cartels in Latin America.
Bogota "has already requested that the (Pentagon) join Colombia in its fight against narco-terrorism, authorizing joint military operations to destroy terrorist and terror networks," Hegseth said at an anti-cartel conference in Panama.
"Aggressive and concrete steps like these exemplify the types of active participation, operationally focused, we want to see from our partners," he added.
Last September, the US military launched a campaign of airstrikes targeting alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that have killed at least 215 people to date.
US President Donald Trump's administration has not provided definitive evidence that the vessels it has been striking are involved in drug trafficking.
Legal experts and rights groups say the strikes could amount to extrajudicial killings because they have apparently targeted civilians who do not pose an immediate threat to the United States.
Colombia's newly elected President Abelardo de la Espriella meanwhile has promised to crush criminal groups profiting from drug trafficking amid the South American country's worst wave of violence of the past decade.
The far-right leader, who replaced leftist Gustavo Petro, has said he will halt his predecessor's unsuccessful peace negotiations with armed groups and confront "narcoterrorism without respite."
De la Espriella, a first-time political leader who openly admires Trump and El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, has said he will intensify airstrikes against guerrillas and drug traffickers and has offered to host US troops on Colombian soil.
Calling himself "The Tiger," De la Espriella plans to forge a military alliance with the United States and Israel to aid his war on guerrillas.
His so-called "Plan Colombia II" is a nod to a multimillion-dollar agreement with Washington in the 2000s aimed at combating drug cartels and leftist groups.
The US State Department said last week that the Trump administration intends to work with Congress to announce "$1 billion in assistance as part of a security package to support" the new administration.
