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Post by Admin on Feb 25, 2019 20:29:38 GMT
President Donald Trump is expected to urge Venezuelan military officials to back the country’s self-declared interim president Juan Guaido and allow humanitarian aid to flow into Venezuela. Trump’s latest appeal will come during a speech Monday in Miami where Trump will seek to ramp up the public pressure on the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, following a series of US-led sanctions and diplomatic maneuvers aimed at ousting Maduro.
The US and dozens of other countries last month recognized Guaido, the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, as the country’s legitimate interim president as the toll of Venezuela’s political, economic and humanitarian crisis mounted. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Trump will reiterate his “strong support” for Guaido and make clear that Venezuela’s “current path toward democracy is irreversible.
Vice President Mike Pence said the US will impose additional sanctions on Venezuelan leaders and pledged more aid to the region as he called on nations to do more to confront embattled President Nicolas Maduro's government.
"To leaders around the world: It's time," Pence said in Bogota, Colombia, on Monday. "There can be no bystanders in Venezuela's struggle for freedom." "Nicolas Maduro is a usurper with no legitimate claim to power, and Nicolas Maduro must go," Pence said.
Pence laid out a series of measures the global community should take to support self-proclaimed leader Juan Guaido, including freezing the assets of state-owned oil and natural gas company Petroleos de Venezuela. The company is a central funding mechanism for the government of Venezuela, which sits on the world's largest oil reserves.
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Post by Admin on Feb 26, 2019 17:30:41 GMT
The United States has imposed tough sanctions on Venezuela's oil industry to put pressure on President Nicolás Maduro to step down.  Oil dominates Venezuela's economy, accounting for almost all of its export earnings.  Its biggest customers have been the US, followed by India and China. But over the past decade, oil production has collapsed and the country is in a deep economic crisis. U.N. Security Council meets to discuss Venezuela at U.S. request, with a briefing by U.N. political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo. So what effect are the sanctions having and who is buying its oil now? |
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Post by Admin on Mar 3, 2019 17:09:14 GMT
 The UN Security Council voted on two resolutions on Venezuela but failed to pass either one as the United States, Russia, and China clashed over the issue on Thursday.  Out of 15 Council members, nine countries, including Germany, France and the UK, voted in favor of the US-pitched draft which calls for a "peaceful restoration of democracy" and fair presidential elections, and expressed "deep concern" over aid blocks. However, Russia and China vetoed the document, with Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia saying the text was "written for regime change, disguised as care for people." "We have all seen this already in Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan," he said. Moscow put forward a rival document, which also called for a solution "through peaceful means," but noted concern over threats to use military force against the government led by Nicolas Maduro. The document also proposed all humanitarian aid deliveries be agreed with Maduro's officials. |
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Post by Admin on May 6, 2019 17:24:35 GMT
“I was there, I saw it with my own eyes. Guaidó was asking the military to let him into La Carlota, and they refused, and then a few minutes afterwards he was making that video claiming he was inside.”  I am interviewing a senior law enforcement officer whom we’ll call Simón. He was at the La Carlota military airbase at 4 a.m. on April 30 in an official capacity. He tells me, in a furious staccato, that the morning everyone is talking about—the coup that dared not speak its name, and failed—was more smoke and mirrors than an image of history in the making. “When he [self-declared, U.S.-backed President Juan Guaidó] called for the Venezuelan people to come and join him, Guaidó gave the impression that he had the support of the military and that they had turned, but that wasn’t even almost true,” Simón says. “He tried to win time and turn the tide using public opinion—based on a fundamental untruth.” Simón tells me that the soldiers who were seen behind Guaidó and the SEBIN intelligence service brass, who were said to have turned and joined the opposition, had all been given money and offered an exit from Venezuela in exchange for their participation in the events of April 30. He also confirms what the now exiled Diputado Ismael García had told me two days prior: the big statement outside La Carlota was supposed to take place on May 1, the day of enormous protest that the opposition had called for weeks earlier. |
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