Colombian President Gustavo Petro has accused the neighbouring country of Peru of annexing a disputed island on the Amazon River, resuscitating a longstanding disagreement between the two nations.
In a social media post on Tuesday, Petro said that Peru had acted to “unilaterally” assert control over the small island of Santa Rosa in a recent congressional vote.
“The Peruvian government has just appropriated it by law,” Petro wrote on the social media platform X.
He added that Peru’s actions could block the Colombian city of Leticia from accessing the Amazon River. “Our government will resort to diplomacy to defend our national sovereignty.”
Petro’s comments appeared to be a response to a vote in June, whereby Peru’s Congress designated the island of Santa Rosa a district in its Loreto province.
Who controls the island has been a subject of debate between Peru and Colombia for nearly a century.
Peru has claimed ownership based on treaties from 1922 and 1929, and it has administered Santa Rosa for decades.
But Colombia maintains that the island of Santa Rosa had not emerged from the Amazon River at the time of the treaties and therefore is not subject to them.
It has also argued that the treaties set the boundary between the two countries at the deepest point of the Amazon River, and that islands like Santa Rosa have emerged on the Colombian side of that dividing line.
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