CARACAS — Iran’s oil minister has paid an official visit to ally Venezuela to meet President Nicolas Maduro and discuss ways to “overcome” the effects of US sanctions against both nations, officials said.

“I received His Excellency Javad Owji, Oil Minister of the sister Islamic Republic of Iran,” Maduro said on Twitter, calling it a “a productive meeting to deepen the ties of brotherhood and cooperation in energy matters.”

State television showed images of the meeting at the presidential palace in Miraflores.

Earlier, Owji met his counterpart Tareck El Aissami to discuss “the construction of routes and mechanisms to overcome the unilateral coercive measures imposed by the United States government and allied countries,” according to a statement from the Venezuelan Oil Ministry.

Javad Owji’s visit to Venezuela, which sits on the world’s largest proven reserves of crude, came just weeks after a visit by United States officials in the midst of rising global oil prices due to the war on Ukraine.

In March, a US delegation held a hushed meeting with Maduro, whose very legitimacy as president Washington disputes.

Iran is a major oil producer and said last month that production capacity was back to levels before the reimposition of US sanctions in 2018.

El Aissami, named a narcotics “kingpin” by the United States which has placed him on a most-wanted fugitives list, posted a video on Instagram Monday of him receiving Owji at his office with a handshake.

Bilateral ties between the two oil producers were strong under the reign of socialist leader Hugo Chavez (1999-2013) and bolstered further under his successor Maduro.

Venezuela, under strict US sanctions that it blames for the collapse of its once-flourishing oil industry, has strong allies in Iran, Russia and China.

In 2020, Venezuela received two shiploads of fuel and derivatives from Iran to help address crippling domestic shortages. Just a few years earlier, it was still the United States’ main supplier.

Also in 2020, on a visit to Caracas, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said his country would remain on Venezuela’s “side.”

The March meeting with Maduro caused questions to be raised in Washington, prompting the White House to clarify it was not in “active conversation” with Venezuela on oil imports.

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/iranian-oil-minister-meets-venezuelas-maduro-for-talks-on-overcoming-sanctions/

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The post In Venezuela, an ongoing struggle for power amid a growing humanitarian disaster first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

“They want what all human beings want – dignity, they want a democratic, peaceful, sovereign Venezuela to call home, one where they and their children can find jobs and live,” he said at an air base in Boa Vista, capital of Roraima state.

He blamed Maduro for a “man-made crisis” of unprecedented proportions in Venezuela and called the Venezuelan president a “drug-trafficker,” in comments to reporters.

Pompeo also visited a soup kitchen serving hungry migrants with Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo. Brazil’s right-wing government two weeks ago declared Maduros’s diplomats personae non gratae but stopped short of expelling them.

Pompeo praised Brazil’s humanitarian efforts to receive 250,000 Venezuelans who have crossed the border, some of the more than 5 million that have left their country due to the political and economic turmoil.

He said Washington was announcing another $348 million to help Venezuelan refugees, including $30 million for those in Brazil, bringing total US contribution to more than $1.2 billion

Brazil’s border with Venezuela has been closed since March 18 due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the flow of migrants crossing into Brazil has dropped from an average of 600 a day to a handful of Venezuelans who walk along cross-country trails.

Pompeo visited Guyana and Suriname before Brazil and continues on Friday to Colombia, all neighbors of Venezuela.

International efforts to encourage democratic change in Venezuela appear to have stalled and Maduro has asserted his grip on power.

Pompeo’s stopover was deplored by former Brazilian leftist President Luiz Inacio da Silva, who said the U.S. official had only visited Brazil to “provoke Venezuela.”

“Whether we like him or not, Venezuela has an elected president. The United States needs to drop this habit of wanting to be the world’s sheriff,” Lula told Reuters in an interview.

Source: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-latam-pompeo-brazil-idUKKBN26935S

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A year after he declared himself interim president of Venezuela – and was recognized by a number of countries – his effort seems to have lost momentum.

Al Jazeera’s Lucia Newman reports from Caracas, Venezuela.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/venezuela-political-crisis-support-guaido-slips-200112102237629.html

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The post Venezuela’s Guaido Speaks to Press After Being Barred From National Assembly first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

(Bloomberg) — Venezuelan politics descended into disarray on Sunday when security forces barred opposition leader Juan Guaido and his backers from entering the National Assembly, allowing loyalists to President Nicolas Maduro to choose an assembly president instead of Guaido.

His suit torn from scaling a fence, Guaido and his supporters went elsewhere and re-elected him anyway, drawing backing from Washington and Latin American and European powers that consider Maduro illegitimate and condemned his actions.

“This is a farce,” said lawmaker Stalin Gonzalez, a Guaido lieutenant after the assembly chose a new leader. “Where is the vote, the list of attendees or the quorum necessary for a vote like this?”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a statement congratulated Guaido on re-election, adding that “arrests, bribes and blocking access to its building were unable to derail“ the assembly. But with Washington preoccupied over threats of retaliation from Iran, this could prove an opportune time for Maduro to pressure Guaido with relative impunity.

Maduro’s Growing Confidence

The move certainly illustrated growing confidence by Maduro that, despite the country’s spiraling poverty, hunger and dysfunction, Guaido’s yearlong attempt to oust him is losing steam.

A year ago, when Guaido, 36, announced that, as president of the National Assembly, he was interim president of the country since Maduro’s election was rigged and illegitimate, he was greeted with hundreds of thousands of citizens backing him in rapturous rallies. His popularity topped 60%.

On Sunday, the streets didn’t ring out with support for him. They were largely empty. He is polling now in the high 30s, according to Datanalisis. He is still the most popular politician in the country and when guards barred him, he shouted, “Does your girlfriend or your mother agree with what you’re doing? What do they say to you at home?”

After being re-elected by his colleagues, Guaido said they’d go to the assembly on Tuesday to meet. It seems unlikely to occur without a struggle. He added, “Today we defeated the dictatorship again. They did not succeed. 2020 is a second opportunity for Venezuela. We have no doubt that we have the majority, we will use it, we must pressure the dictatorship.”

Three Legislatures

But Maduro controls all the key institutions, including the military, electoral council, and judicial system. In 2017, he also set up an alternative legislature, the National Constituent Assembly. As of now, there appear to be three legislative bodies in an increasingly authoritarian system.

On Sunday, Maduro said new assembly elections were coming this year — and Guaido and his backers will have to decide whether to take part in them. By doing so, they risk losing in a rigged process; by staying away, they lose the only body they still control. Even if they have little power to do much, they have the moral suasion of having been elected.

The man who has now declared himself president of the assembly is Luis Parra, a deputy ensnared in a corruption scandal. While officially a member of the opposition, he has abandoned Guaido. Maduro saluted Parra on television, declaring that the nation’s legislature now has new leadership.

Luis Vicente Leon, head of Datanalisis, called Sunday’s events “the equivalent of a coup against the only legitimately elected institution” in the country. “For an opposition that was already very weak, this is not good news.”

Guaido and the rest of the opposition went to the eastern Caracas headquarters of El Nacional newspaper to hold their vote. Inside a cramped room, a large flag framed Guaido and his deputies, who sat on plastic chairs and listened as lawmakers announced their votes, yelling out “traitor” and “sellout” when Parra and his supporters’ names were called. He won with 100 votes.

Agents in Ski Masks

From dawn on Sunday, the streets around the National Assembly were dominated by the National Guard and National Police. They closed vehicular access with checkpoints and anti-riot trucks. The information ministry barred a number of journalists. Nearby, intelligence agents armed with rifles patrolled wearing ski masks.

Several opposition lawmakers who spent the night in a hotel said agents knocked on their doors claiming there was a bomb threat, checked around and left.

Carlos Romero, a political analyst at Central University of Venezuela, said, “Tomorrow Maduro’s government will undergo even more criticism than before. What happened went beyond what anyone could have predicted. Maduro’s government feels strong enough to carry this out right now because they have succeeded over Guaido’s failed plan to end his government. Maduro was able to forge international allies and divide the opposition.”

While the U.S., most of Europe and most Latin American countries have backed Guaido, Maduro has maintained the support of Russia, China, Cuba, Iran and Turkey, evading U.S. oil and other key sanctions by trading through those countries.

Source: https://www.investing.com/news/commodities-news/maduro-forces-oust-guaido-from-congress-spark-day-of-chaos-2052791

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Venezuela’s military is “on alert” against any border violations as it remains loyal to acting President Nicolas Maduro, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez has said.

“The armed forces will remain deployed and on alert along the borders, as our commander in chief has ordered, to avoid any violations of territorial integrity,” Padrino said in a statement on Tuesday.

He said the military “only has one president,” referring to Maduro, and the armed forces are “not mercenaries who sell themselves to the highest bidder.” He said the army will not accept “a puppet government” or “orders from any foreign government power.”

Juan Guaido, who declared himself the interim president last month in an effort to oust Maduro from office, has tried to recruit the military to his side and let aid into Venezuela. The opposition leader has been rallying for international support for his challenge to Maduro.

But the military high command has maintained its allegiance to Maduro,  a factor deemed key to keeping the acting president in power.

Read more: Opinion: Germany’s pressure on Venezuela fails to deliver

Closed to aid

Humanitarian aid, including emergency food and medicine, is being stored in Colombia, Venezuela’s neighbor to the west, and three Dutch Caribbean islands, namely Curacao, Aruba and Bonaire. Venezuela has instituted a maritime and airspace ban on the three islands.

Guaido said he is organizing caravans through Brazil and the Colombian border city of Cucuta on Saturday to bring aid provided by the United States into the country. The opposition has claimed that 300,000 people face death without the aid, but Maduro has denied there is a humanitarian crisis in the country.

A Brazilian presidential spokesman said Tuesday that the country was cooperating with the US to supply aid, but would leave it to Venezuelans to take the goods across the border.

Maduro has claimed that the aid relief is a smokescreen for a US invasion of Venezuela, and has blamed US sanctions and “economic war” for Venezuela’s crisis and fiscal woes.

Read more: How to resolve the Venezuelan debt conundrum

Trump’s ‘extreme arrogance’

On Monday, US President Donald Trump, who backs Guaido, warned the Venezuelan military not to continue supporting Maduro.

“You will find no safe harbor, no easy exit and no way out. You will lose everything,” Trump said.

Defense Minister Padrino Lopez responded Tuesday by calling Trump’s words “foolish,” and said the US president exhibited “extreme arrogance.” He said the US is using “blackmail” and seeking to “intimidate” with “coercion.”

dv/cmk (AFP, AP, dpa, EFE)

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/venezuela-military-on-alert-as-it-closes-borders-to-aid/a-47594492

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Alexander Shchetinin, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Latin America department, said Monday that Moscow hasn’t received any such request from Caracas, according to Russian news reports.

Asked to compare the situation in Venezuela to Syria, where Russia has waged a military campaign to shore up President Bashar Assad’s government, Shchetinin said “there is a big difference” between Syria and Venezuela but wouldn’t elaborate.

At the same time, the Russian diplomat strongly warned the U.S. against making calls on the Venezuelan military to drop support for President Nicolas Maduro, saying it represented an “unthinkable meddling into foreign affairs of a sovereign nation.”

Venezuelan Bolivarian Army soldiers stand guard at the Tienditas International Bridge that links Colombia and Venezuela, near Urena, Venezuela, Friday, Feb. 8, 2019. As humanitarian aid kits were being packed into individual white bags in the city of Cucuta, just across the river from Venezuela, U.S. officials and Venezuelan opposition leaders appealed to the military to the let the aid through. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-6691249/Russia-Venezuela-asked-military-assistance.html

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