The United States will take “additional measures” if Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro does not publish the minutes of the election, the White House warned on Friday, a day after imposing sanctions on 16 officials “for electoral fraud.”
“Maduro has options and decisions that only he can make” and “we have made it very clear to him” that the first thing he has to do “is publish all the electoral data and the results” of the elections, said the spokesman for the National Security Council, John Kirby.
“We have issued sanctions. We are not ruling out anything in the future,” he added in a telephone press conference.
On Thursday, Washington sanctioned 16 officials from Venezuela’s electoral authorities, the Supreme Court, the national assembly, the armed forces and intelligence services.
To date, the country has imposed economic sanctions on more than 100 Venezuelans, including Maduro himself, who is accused of drug trafficking, and 100 entities.
The key issue now is whether Maduro “is going to do the right thing for Venezuelans or not. He has to make that decision and if he doesn’t we will have to make some additional decisions on our own,” Kirby said.
The spokesman did not specify which ones. The oil sector was spared further sanctions on Thursday, so the licenses granted to several oil companies, such as the American Chevron, the Spanish Repsol and the French Maurel & Prom, to operate in Venezuela remain in force.
The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry described the US sanctions as “unilateral coercive measures” and a “new crime of aggression.”
Like other countries, the United States believes that Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia, who was granted asylum by Spain, won the elections on July 28 by a wide margin.
LDAV
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2024-09-19 03:16:32