Trump and Colombia's Petro hold talks
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After trading insults on social media, President Trump and Colombia's President Petro meet for the first time today, at the White House in Washington. We also report from Colombia, where our correspondent has been out with the anti-narcotics police, known as the Jungle Commandos.
Also in the programme: Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the second son of Libya's former leader, Muammar Gaddafi, is reported to have been killed at his home in Zintan - we hear from a journalist who met him; as Sudan's army claims to have re-taken another besieged city, Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council describes a “forgotten horrific conflict” and a “starvation crisis beyond belief”; plus the Australian scientist who helped invent the cochlear implant which now allows hundreds of thousands to hear – and who has just won a prize for his lifetime’s work.
(IMAGE: U.S. President Donald Trump and his Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro meet at the Oval Office at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 3, 2026 / CREDIT: Colombia Presidency/Handout via REUTERS)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.2 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:13.0 | We're coming to you live from London with me, Sean Lay. |
| 0:17.3 | Beforehand, no one had predicted that a televised meeting at the White House between Donald Trump and Volodymy Zelensky would turn into a slanging match and come close to derailing US support for Ukraine. |
| 0:28.8 | A year on, and Tuesday's meeting between President Trump and the leader of Colombia would not have surprised anyone if it had turned into an insult fest. |
| 0:38.0 | Just last month, Mr Trump called President Gustavo Petro a sick man who likes selling cocaine to the United States. |
| 0:45.6 | President Petro accused him of committing war crimes by launching deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean. |
| 0:52.3 | America said we're carrying drugs. After slinging mud at one |
| 0:56.2 | another on social media, the two men eventually spoke on the phone. Whatever was said then, |
| 1:01.5 | the outcome was today's visit. But it was a visit conducted behind closed doors. Let's talk now to |
| 1:07.5 | the BBC's Berndt Dubusman, who joins us from Washington, D.C. |
| 1:13.0 | Burnd, he slipped in a side door. |
| 1:15.4 | No journalists were allowed in at any point or at the start or the end of the meeting. |
| 1:20.2 | Do we have any idea of how it went? |
| 1:23.9 | Well, we do. |
| 1:25.7 | I mean, we don't have many of the details, but we do know that all signs point to it not having been acrimonious or some kind of Zelensky style ambush. We know that gifts were exchanged, for example. And in the last 20 minutes or so, President Petro gave an interview to a Colombian radio station in which he kind of discussed a bit of the substance of the meeting, |
| 1:48.8 | which focused heavily on counter-narcotics efforts, security, oil, and Venezuela. |
| 1:55.6 | But it didn't sound in any way as if things had gone badly or that things had somehow turned sour, |
| 2:02.7 | which was something that many, many observers said was a very distinct possibility going into this. |
| 2:08.6 | In some ways, it's surprising he got the meeting at all, isn't it? |
| 2:12.1 | I mean, he's coming to the end of his office. |
| 2:13.8 | He's not only ideologically, hardly someone who President Trump would naturally feel |
... |
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