Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido meets with members of a multinational support group in Bogota Monday to hammer out a strategy to remove his rival Nicolas Maduro from office. The trip comes after two people were killed and hundreds wounded as Guaido supporters clashed with Venezuelan security forces in a failed attempt to cross in truckloads of humanitarian aid from Colombia and Brazil.
The European Union condemned Venezuela’s use of violence and armed civilians to block the aid entry, while United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “shocked and saddened” by the civilian deaths.
Guaido, the 35-year-old leader of Venezuela’s National Assembly, declared himself acting president in January after the opposition controlled legislature concluded that Maduro was fraudulently re-elected.Some 50 countries recognize him as Venezuela’s legitimate president.
Guaido flew to the Colombian capital Sunday for the meeting with members of the Lima Group – 13 Latin American countries plus Canada that are seeking to resolve Venezuela’s political impasse.Vice President Mike Pence represented Washington at the event.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he was confident that “Maduro’s days are numbered,” blaming the border violence on armed civilian loyalists known as “colectivos.””We’re aimed at a singular mission — ensuring the Venezuelan people get the democracy they so richly deserve,” Pompeo said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
President Donald Trump has said the United States is not ruling out armed action.Upon landing in Bogota Guaido called on the international community to consider “all measures to free” Venezuela.Venezuela is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis that has seen poverty soar during a prolonged recession and hyperinflation.
Humanitarian aid, much of it from the United States, has been at the center of the standoff between Maduro and Guaido.Maduro claims the aid is a smokescreen for a US invasion, and has ordered several crossings on Venezuela’s borders with Colombia and Brazil closed.
“Today we consolidated yesterday’s victory, tomorrow we’ll consolidate it even more,” Maduro’s right-hand man Diosdado Cabello said Sunday at a pro-government rally in the border town of Tachira.”Not a single one of those trucks with aid got through,” Cabello said.
Maduro seems to have won this round in the power struggle, even though 156 members of Venezuela’s security forces deserted to Colombia or Brazil.After Saturday’s events it is “not very clear” that Guaido has “massive” support in Venezuela, analyst Rafael Pineros told AFP.
