2023-04-25 21:49:50
“Can we coexist or do we have to fight?“. The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, launched the question this Tuesday at the opening of the International Conference on the political process in Venezuela. Petro considered, in front ofrepresentatives from 20 countries Latin America, the EU and the United States, that the “most unequal region in the world” must promote understanding and political alternation so as not to return to the years in which terror and democratic destruction reigned. According to the host, the best way is strengthen the inter-American human rights system, which Venezuela abandoned in 2012. In his opinion, the return of Caracas “could help” to resolve the internal conflict in the neighboring country. His eventual reentry would allow “that we find the formula for a better democracy.” The other “great conquest” to move in that direction would be the lifting of the economic sanctions against the Miraflores Palace which, above all, he insisted, fell on the Venezuelan people and forced men and women to “run away from hunger“.
Petro acknowledged in front of his guests, among whom were Juan González, principal director of the National Security Council for the Western Hemisphere, that the negotiations in Mexico between the madurismo and the opposition they advance and retreat and it is necessary to gain an overcoming momentum. The Colombian president repeated the proposal that he had made to Joe Biden in Washington: create conditions for transparent elections, while, at the same time, the effects of the measures that the United States especially adopted to erode the government of Nicolás Maduro begin to be mitigated. . The goal is that “the people can decide what they want and without pressures” exerted “outside the country” and that citizens are not “pressured from within”.
The EU position
The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Policy, Joseph Borrell, he had expressed approximate definitions upon arriving in Bogotá. “It is evident that a process of democratic normalization (in Venezuela) will have to be accompanied by a gradual lifting of sanctions. It all consists in knowing when and how.” Borrell expressed his certainty that “the sanctions that are of concern are not the personal sanctions of the leaders of the regime” but those “that affect Venezuelans.” The European Union, he recalled, ” has not taken any sanction” that worsens “the living conditions” of the inhabitants of that country.
Lastly, he considered that the International Conference could “help unblock the situation“and that the madurismo and the opposition resume their negotiations in Mexico and apply the previously agreed humanitarian agreement. “In any negotiation process, one party does and the other responds. Action and reaction have to be synchronized in time.”
Maduro sets conditions
A few hours before the Bogota event began, Maduro wished the International Conference “success”. At the same time, he made known his requests. To return to the negotiating table in Mexico, the Government, “the first condition it is the lifting of all illegal sanctions”. The president made special reference to the money and gold that are “illegally” held in England and “in European banks”, as well as the profits of the Venezuelan refining company Citgo that operates in the United States and it was confiscated in 2019. Maduro demanded the “immediate” suspension of the investigations carried out by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity. He also requested that the United States release 3.2 billion dollars from Caracas and deposit it in the social investment fund agreed in Mexico with the opposition.
The Guaidó case
The meeting in the Colombian capital staged the rearrangements in the same Venezuelan opposition. Four years ago, the deputy Juan Guaido he had managed to rally behind him almost all of the anti-madurismo by proclaiming himself “president in charge” with the blessing of Donald Trump. His figure devalued over the years to insignificance. His stay in Bogotá was brief.
“The persecution of the dictatorship Unfortunately today it spread to Colombia,” said the former deputy and hinted that he was forced to leave the country, bound for the United States. “Mr. Guaidó was not expelled, it is better that lies not appear in politics,” he said. corrected Petro. asked for asylum “I would have been happy to have offered it”. What he shouldn’t have done is “entering the country illegally”. He was offered “transit permission, he was not deported back to his country and with the permission of the US he flew there.”
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