Pence urges allies to isolate Venezuela

Vice president in Peru for Summit of the Americas

LIMA, Peru — Showing solidarity with opposition leaders, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence urged Latin American allies on Friday to further isolate Venezuela, suggesting the Trump administration would seek additional sanctions to counter the country’s political crisis.

Pence, in Lima for the Summit of the Americas, was whisked away from the gathering and to his hotel shortly before President Donald Trump announced retaliatory strikes in Syria for apparent chemical weapons use. Pence had been scheduled to attend a banquet hosted by Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra on Friday night, and it was not immediately clear if he would still attend.

The vice president announced that the U.S. would provide nearly $16 million in humanitarian assistance to Venezuelans who have fled their country under the rule of President Nicolas Maduro.

“We want one message to be clear: We are with the people of Venezuela,” Pence said at the U.S. ambassador’s residence, seated with a group of Venezuelan opposition leaders. The vice president called Maduro’s government a “dictatorship” and said the U.S. would continue to push a hard line against the country’s leadership.

“The U.S. and our allies, I believe, are prepared to do much more,” Pence said, accusing Maduro of “refusing humanitarian aid to be delivered to Venezuela.” He said the U.S. would push “additional sanctions, additional isolation and additional diplomatic pressure — beginning in our hemisphere but across the wider world.”

Pence is subbing for President Donald Trump after the president pulled out of his first planned visit to Latin America to manage the U.S. response to an apparent chemical weapons attack on civilians in Syria.

The White House said Pence would sit down today with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who has yet to meet with Trump in an impasse over the wall Trump has pledged to build along the U.S.-Mexico border. Pence’s meeting with Peña Nieto will follow Trump’s calls to send National Guard troops to the border. That adds further tensions as the neighbors, along with Canada, work to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In a series of meetings with Latin American leaders, Pence plans to promote good governance and democratic institutions and urge allies to maintain pressure on Maduro. The U.S. has sanctioned Maduro and dozens of top officials, accusing the country of human rights abuses and sliding into a dictatorship.

With the White House’s encouragement, Maduro has been barred from the summit over his plans to hold a presidential election that the opposition is boycotting and that many foreign governments consider a sham. During the meeting with four opposition leaders, Pence listened as they described their once-prosperous country devolving into chaos.

Antonio Ledezma, the former mayor of Caracas, pleaded with Pence through a translator to bolster sanctions against Maduro, asking for “not only humanitarian aid but humanitarian intervention.”