OAS chief says should not rule out Venezuela 'military intervention'
The head of the Organization of American States on Friday said "military
intervention" to "overthrow" Nicolas Maduro's Venezuelan government
must not be ruled out for the country mired in economic and humanitarian
crisis.
"With regards to a military intervention aimed at overthrowing the
regime of Nicolas Maduro, I think we should not exclude any option," OAS
Secretary-General Luis Almagro told journalists in the Colombian city
of Cucuta, near the border with Venezuela.
His comments follow a report in The New York Times last Saturday that
officials from US President Donald Trump's administration met secretly
with Venezuelan military officers to discuss plans to oust Maduro, but
eventually decided not to help.
Almagro -- dubbed an "interventionist" by Maduro -- said Caracas was committing "crimes against humanity" against its citizens.
"Suffering of the people, in the induced exodus that it is driving, puts
diplomatic actions in first place, but we should not rule out any
action," he said.
The OAS leader on Friday ended a three-day visit to Colombia concerning
the wave of migrants fleeing there from oil-rich but impoverished
Venezuela.
Venezuela is mired in a deep economic crisis that has triggered the
departure of 1.6 million Venezuelans since 2015, according to the United
Nations. Colombia has received more than one million of the migrants.
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez has said her government
complained to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that "individual
officials" have been portraying "a normal migratory flow as a
humanitarian crisis to justify an intervention."
Almagro urged the international community to "not permit a dictatorship
in Venezuela" because it provokes regional instability in humanitarian
and security terms, alongside the effects on Venezuelans.
The Venezuelan people "have paid a more than high price to recover their
freedom, to recover their democracy, and have not yet recovered it. The
international community has to definitely respond to this," Almagro
said.
In August 2017, media reports said Trump asked top advisors about the
potential for a US invasion of Venezuela. Around the same time, he said
publicly that he would not rule out a "military option" to end the chaos
there.
The collapse of Venezuela's oil-based economy under the increasingly
authoritarian Maduro has led to dire shortages of food and medicine.
Maduro has angrily blamed the US for many of his problems.
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