Bogotá (AFP) – Colombia’s outgoing President Gustavo Petro tore into his US counterpart Donald Trump on Thursday for supporting a hard-right candidate to succeed him, accusing Washington of allying itself with the “narco-traffickers” it professes to combat.

The famously outspoken Petro was reacting to Trump’s full-throated endorsement of tough-talking lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella over a leftist senator in Colombia’s presidential election.

De la Espriella, 47, made a fortune representing drug-trafficking paramilitaries, fraudsters and soccer stars.

He generated surprise by defeating leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda, an ally of Petro, in the first round of voting in Sunday’s presidential election.

The two will face off again in a June 21 runoff.

Trump on Tuesday backed De la Espriella, citing his “tremendous accomplishments in life, and his political support for me, personally.”

Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing leader, has criticized Trump’s meddling in the campaign.

“Their (US) allies in Colombia come from the narco-paramilitary regime; they are genocidal and drug traffickers,” he told AFP in an interview at the presidential palace.

Trump has sought to influence several recent elections in Latin America by backing right-wingers who talk tough on crime and migration against leftists he dismisses as Marxists.

Espriella has promised to deepen US-Colombian relations “like never before” if elected.

He has the backing of hardline former president Alvaro Uribe, who is accused of colluding with paramilitaries behind the massacres of thousands of civilians during the worst years of Colombia’s more-than-six-decade conflict.

Both Petro and Cepeda accuse the paramilitaries of committing a “genocide” of leftist political activists and politicians, including Cepeda’s father, a communist senator, who was assassinated in 1994.

The Colombian right and Trump administration, for their part, accuse Petro of being soft on left-wing guerrilla groups, some of whom continue to fight the state and live off cocaine trafficking.

Petro expressed “regret” that “figures and governments who want to fight drug trafficking are actually helping to bring crime to political power in Colombia.”

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