Venezuela Political Crisis: Trump 'with you 100 percent'
United States Vice President Mike Pence passed on a message from Donald Trump to Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido yesterday, telling him "we are with you 100 percent."
Pence and Guaido met in Colombia's capital Bogota during a meeting of regional allies the Lima Group to discuss its next move regarding Venezuela's crisis and the strategy to oust President Nicolas Maduro.
Guaido, Venezuela's self-declared interim president, urged the international community on Sunday to consider "all measures" to overthrow Maduro after clashes at border crossings left at least three protesters dead and 300 others wounded near the Brazilian border.
"In the Lima Group we're fighting to find a peaceful solution," Peru's Foreign Affairs Minister Hugo de Zela said.
"We have reaffirmed again and again our commitment to a democratic transition (of government) and the restoration of constitutional order in Venezuela," added Colombia's Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo.
The US last month imposed crippling sanctions on the OPEC nation's oil industry, squeezing its top source of foreign revenue.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he was confident that "Maduro's days are numbered," blaming the border violence on armed supporters known as "colectivos".
"We're aimed at a singular mission - ensuring the Venezuelan people get the democracy they so richly deserve," he said on CNN's State of the Union programme on Sunday.
'LIBERATION EFFORT'
President Donald Trump has in the past said military intervention in Venezuela was "an option", and following the Venezuelan opposition's failure to penetrate government blockades, some in Washington stepped up the belligerent rhetoric.
US Senator Marco Rubio, an influential voice on Venezuela policy in Washington, said the violence on Saturday had "opened the door to various potential multilateral actions not on the table just 24 hours ago".
Later, he tweeted out pictures of anti-American politicians including Panama's Manuel Noriega, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu at the height of their power and then brutal downfall, in a not-so-subtle suggestion being that Maduro himself could suffer a similar fate.
Brazil, a diplomatic heavyweight in Latin America which has the region's largest economy, called on "the international community, especially those countries that have not yet recognised Juan Guaido as interim president, to join in the liberation effort of Venezuela."
Maduro, who retains the backing of China and Russia, which both have major energy sector investments in Venezuela, says the opposition's aid efforts are part of a US-orchestrated coup.
His information minister, Jorge Rodriguez, during a news conference on Sunday gloated about the opposition's failure to bring in aid and called Guaido "a puppet and a used condom".
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on Sunday that Venezuela, the Caribbean island's top ally, was the victim of US imperialist attempts to restore neoliberalism in Latin America.
Foreign aid, much of it from the US, has become the centrepiece of the standoff between Maduro and Guaido.
The 35-year-old Guaido has won the backing of more than 50 governments around the world since declaring himself interim president at a rally in January, arguing that Maduro's re-election last year was illegitimate because some popular opposition candidates were barred from running.
But he has so far been unable to cause a major rift inside the military, despite repeated appeals and the offer of amnesty to those joining the opposition's fight for power.
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