Guaido steps up pressure to oust Maduro
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido was due to meet Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as part of a tour of several nations to ratchet up international pressure on President Nicolas Maduro to step down.
Guaido in January invoked constitutional provisions to assume an interim presidency, arguing Maduro’s re-election was fraudulent. He has since been recognised by most Western nations including Brazil as Venezuela’s rightful leader.
The congress chief has organised nationwide protests while the US has imposed crippling sanctions on Venezuela’s key oil industry and the government officials. Yet Maduro retains control of state institutions, leaving the two sides locked in a stalemate.
Guaido will travel to Brasilia for a two-day visit from Bogota, where he attended a meeting with US vice-president Mike Pence and the regional Lima Group about how to resolve the crisis in Venezuela.
“The interim president of Venezuela will meet Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro at the Planalto Palace,” said Maria Teresa Belandria, appointed by Guaido as his ambassador to Brazil and recognised as such by the Bolsonaro government.
THE OPPOSITION LEADER WILL ALSO MEET DIPLOMATS OF OTHER COUNTRIES TO DISCUSS THE CRISIS IN VENEZUELA
Guaido at the weekend called for the international community to make clear all options were on the table to oust Maduro, after security forces loyal to him violently drove back the opposition’s attempts to bring humanitarian aid into the country.
Brazil, whose northern state of Roraima depends on Venezuela for electrical power, this week played down the possibility of military intervention.
While in Brazil, Guaido will also meet diplomats of other countries that have recognised him as Venezuela’s interim leader, pending new presidential elections, Belandria said.
Brazil is hosting one of the Venezuelan opposition’s collection points for aid and together with the US has funded the 200 tons of food and medicine being stockpiled in the northern city of Boa Vista.
The opposition failed to get that aid across the border as planned last weekend after Maduro closed it. Twenty-five Venezuelans who were wounded by gunfire in protests across the frontier were treated in a Brazilian hospital.
Roraima state said on Wednesday a Venezuelan man who had suffered a gunshot wound died of multiple organ failure. That raised the death toll from protests on Friday and Saturday to five, Venezuelan rights group Penal Forum said.
Maduro denies there is a crisis in Venezuela despite overseeing a hyperinflationary meltdown that has resulted in sharp increases in malnutrition and the spread of preventable disease, as well as an exodus of 3.4million Venezuelans since 2015.
The socialist leader and his allies, such as Russia and Cuba, have accused the opposition of using aid as an excuse for foreign intervention.
The US special envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, denied those accusations on Tuesday but said Washington would impose more sanctions on “high-ranking members of the regime and their financial affairs” this week and next.