Aid standoff as nation suffers
Millions of dollars worth of food and medical supplies remained stuck at Venezuela’s border with Colombia overnight in a highstakes showdown between the United States-backed
Venezuelan opposition and President Nicolas Maduro.
Despite the socialist leader’s refusal to allow in the humanitarian aid, Venezuelan opposition leaders are making increasingly ambitious promises about the delivery of US assistance, but with no clear plan for making it happen.
‘‘This aid is going to be arriving in Venezuela, in the hospitals, for the Venezuelans and into the hands of the most vulnerable, have no doubt,’’ said Lester Toledo, a representative of Juan Guaido, the self-declared interim president of Venezuela, who has secured the backing of more than 40 countries.
At a news conference on the border between Colombia and Venezuela, Toledo stood beside a vast warehouse filled with white plastic sacks of rice, beans and sugar labelled ‘‘From the American people’’.
He said three more warehouses would be opening in the region shortly, and that his fellow Venezuelans could count on aid arriving ‘‘as soon as they open the border gates in the next few days’’.
The Venezuelan military has blocked the Tienditas International Bridge linking the two countries with two shipping containers and a tanker, which has become a symbol of Maduro’s standoff with the US and its European and South American allies.
Despite growing international political support for the opposition, the Venezuelan military has not defected en masse, and it remains unclear where the US and the opposition go from here.
Maduro, who enjoys the support of China and Russia, rebuffed calls to let the aid into the country yesterday at a news conference in Caracas.
‘‘‘The reality is there is no help. It’s a message of humiliation to the people. If they really wanted to help, they should lift all the economic sanctions, the financial persecution, and cancel the economic ban that robs us of billions of dollars,’’ Maduro said.
He insisted that Venezuela was not facing a crisis – but during the news conference, the power went out twice.
The Trump administration has reiterated its implicit military threat against Maduro and warned him to leave Venezuelan opposition figures unharmed. Yesterday, national security adviser John Bolton reaffirmed that ‘‘all options are on the table’’.
Despite the warning, US and Colombian officials have said they do not plan to use military force to get tens of millions of dollars of humanitarian aid into Venezuela.
The possibility of such an operation loomed yesterday as Isaias Medina, a former Venezuelan diplomat who broke with Maduro in 2017, called on the Trump administration to consider the military option. ‘‘The main objective here is to bring humanitarian assistance, and if it must be done by military support, so be it,’’ he said at United Nations headquarters in New York.
But US officials have conceded that their most realistic option is to persuade members of the Venezuelan military to defy Maduro’s order to block the aid.
Toledo yesterday appealed to the armed forces, saying: ‘‘Members of the military, this aid is also for you. Here is food for your children, medicine for a people that’s suffering. Here is help for children. Your job is not to condemn your people, it’s to help them.’’
Guaido and his team have started speaking about a humanitarian corridor into the country, although with the border crossing blocked, it is unclear how that would work.
Toledo said a previous border closure between the two countries had been called off when thousands of women protested.
The director of the Colombian emergency department, Eduardo Jose Gonzales Angulo, said the delivery of aid was a five-stage process but that the final two stages – moving the aid to the border and distributing it within Venezuela – would be up to Gauido and his team.
Asked how American aid might make it into Venezuela, a spokesman for the US Agency for International Development said the US was working with Guaido on a plan, but did not disclose any details.
‘‘Before providing aid, we require that adequate provisions be in place to ensure that those receiving US assistance, our partners, or our staff will not be inadvertently put in harm’s way,’’ the spokesman said.
– Washington Post