Delegations from 20 countries, including the United States, were in favor of easing sanctions against the Venezuelan government if it commits to holding elections with guarantees for the opposition in 2024, those attending a summit on the issue in Bogotá concluded.
Gathered in the Colombian capital at the invitation of President Gustavo Petro, the diplomats stressed the “need to establish an electoral schedule that allows free, transparent elections to be held and with full guarantees for all Venezuelan actors” next year, he summarized to the media. Foreign Minister Alvaro Leyva.
According to the minister, the delegations “identified common positions” regarding the “lifting of the different sanctions against Venezuela” if the needs of both the government of Nicolás Maduro and the opposition that were exposed in the negotiations that were held in Mexico and that they entered into a stalemate in November.
Leyva did not specify if the dialogues will be resumed. Nor if the United States and the rest of the countries promised to lift the sanctions. Instead, she assured that Petro will convene a new summit “promptly” with the same guests in order “to follow up on the development of what has been achieved” this Tuesday.
Through a statement published on Twitter by its foreign minister, Yvan Gil, the Venezuelan government assured that it “take note of the deliberations carried out” at the conference and reiterated the “prevailing need” to lift the sanctions.
The meeting was attended by emissaries of US President Joe Biden, such as the deputy national security adviser, Jon Finer, and the head of European Union diplomacy, Josep Borrell, among others.
The meeting took place in the shadow of Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader who crossed the border from Venezuela on foot on Monday, without going through the immigration process and despite not being invited to the summit.
At night, he denounced that the Colombian authorities expelled him and he had to take a commercial flight to the United States, a country that from 2019 until January of this year considered him president in charge of Venezuela as part of the strategy used by former President Donald Trump (2017 -2021) to press the fall of Maduro.
Petro denied it and clarified that despite his “illegal entry” into the country, he was allowed to travel to Miami for “humanitarian reasons.”
The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry opened an administrative investigation against Guaidó for his “irregular entry” into Colombia.
“He did not have to do what he did, it is seen that behind his action there was the intention to make noise,” Leyva said.
According to the Colombian foreign minister, countries that attended the summit “will inform President Nicolás Maduro” and the “opposition parties and sectors and civil society of the results of the summit for their evaluation and comments.”
Maduro, in power since 2013, blames the international blockades for the economic crisis that the flagging oil power is experiencing.
The opposition denounces fraud in the 2018 presidential elections, judicial persecution and lack of guarantees to participate in next year’s elections.
In the meeting on Tuesday, the Venezuelan parties, which have accumulated failures in previous negotiations, in the Dominican Republic and Barbados, did not participate.
Prior to the summit, Borrell urged attendees to “continue exploring the way to return to the democratic path in Venezuela.”
The latest approaches in Mexico began in August 2021 and ended last November with a single agreement on the release of some 3,000 million dollars blocked by sanctions, an initiative that did not prosper.
For analysts, the closeness between Maduro and Petro, the first leftist president in the history of Colombia, could straighten out the frustrated record of those negotiations.
Colombia was Guaidó’s main ally in the region during the government of the right-wing Iván Duque (2018-2022), when diplomatic relations between Bogotá and Caracas were broken and the border between the two countries was closed.
Instead, Petro has met the Venezuelan president four times since his inauguration in August and reopened border crossings in friendly gestures toward his neighbor before hosting Tuesday’s summit.
His actions are viewed with suspicion by some of the Venezuelan migrants living in Colombia, the main recipient (2.4 million) of the 6.8 million people who have fled the country’s crisis, according to the UN.
A few steps from the summit venue, Venezuelan citizens dressed in black and waving flags protested against Maduro. In front of the statue of the “Liberator” they raised a sign with the message “no more dictatorship.”
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
