Ministers from the Organization of American States (OAS) discussed the crisis in Venezuela yesterday at a meeting that infuriated Caracas but which the regional group’s chief insisted was not an “intervention.”
The crisis talks are the latest in a series of OAS foreign ministers’ meetings that caused an irate President Nicolas Maduro to announce Venezuela’s withdrawal from the OAS in April — a process that will take two years.
Maduro accuses the OAS of “interventionism” for seeking diplomatic solutions to Venezuela’s deteriorating political and economic crisis which has resulted in more than 70 people being killed since near-daily protests erupted against the government on April 1.
However, OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro told a press conference as the talks got under way in the Mexican resort of Cancun that “Defending democracy is an essential principle (of the OAS), it’s not an intervention”.
The OAS foreign ministers will be seeking to reconcile two opposing proposals on Venezuela and send them to the regional group’s general assembly, which is holding its annual meeting this week.
On the one side are Caribbean countries sympathetic to Maduro’s government, and which for years received generous exports of discounted crude from oil giant Venezuela.
They are proposing a resolution that calls for an “internal” solution to the crisis, based on “dialogue” between the government and opposition.
On the opposite side are the United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru and Panama, which want to create a “contact group” on Venezuela — a sort of task force of countries that would seek to make Maduro’s government respect the OAS’s democratic norms.
