Argentina negotiates with Venezuela safe passage for opponents welcomed in its embassy in Caracas

2024-04-06 00:00:03

BUENOS AIRES (AP) — Argentina and Venezuela are negotiating a safe passage for the six opponents of Nicolás Maduro’s government who have taken refuge for ten days in the residence of the Argentine ambassador in Caracas.

“We are managing it, it is not that easy,” confirmed Argentine Foreign Minister Diana Mondino on Friday during an event organized by the Stock Exchange of the Mediterranean province of Córdoba, north of Buenos Aires.

The government of Milei, a far-right economist who took office in December, reported that on March 25 it had hosted six Venezuelan opposition leaders at the official residence of the Argentine ambassador in Caracas.

A week ago, Argentina granted the six political asylum status.

Unlike the caution expressed by Mondino, a senior Venezuelan government official who requested anonymity as a condition for speaking on the subject assured AP that safe passage will be granted to the opponents.

“In an extraordinary way, it allowed, well, these people to leave the national territory towards Buenos Aires, as a result of humanitarian reasons,” the official explained. He indicated that they are waiting for Argentina to organize the departure of the opponents to Buenos Aires.

The refugee political leaders were not officially identified. However, former deputy Omar González Moreno, from the Vente Venezuela party, confirmed that he is one of them in an interview with a Buenos Aires radio station.

The Milei government, a fierce critic of Maduro, justified its decision as a consequence of “acts of harassment and persecution directed against political figures in Venezuela” and it materialized after the controversial closing of the candidate registration period for the presidential elections on December 28. July, in which Maduro aspires to a third six-year term.

The electoral process has been marked by the blocking of the nomination of opposition leader María Corina Machado and her replacement Corina Yoris.

The Venezuelan authorities maintain that Machado could not register her candidacy because she was disqualified from holding public office for 15 years, while in the case of Yoris they point out that the lack of consensus regarding the academic, without any legal impediment against her, would be the cause. of his failed registration.

The so-called Democratic Unitary Platform, a bloc confirmed by several of the main opposition parties, meanwhile, denounced impediments to registration in the automated system of the National Electoral Council (CNE). The bloc finally registered Edmundo González as a provisional candidate.

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