Venezuela Talks Break Down, Opposition Claims
23 Noviembre 2016 - 7:20PM
Noticias Dow Jones
Venezuela's opposition said Wednesday the government has
abandoned Vatican-brokered talks, potentially ending a short-lived
political truce in the deeply polarized nation.
Government officials failed to attend a routine meeting Tuesday
night. Opposition negotiators said the government was protesting
the opposition's decision to raise the issue in congress of the two
in-laws of President Nicolá s Maduro, who were convicted in New
York last week of drug trafficking.
Mr. Maduro and his officials haven't commented on the status of
the talks. The Information Ministry didn't respond to request for
comment.
Since their start last month, the talks have led to the release
of several jailed opposition activists and vague agreements on
future elections but have failed to make any real progress toward
solving the country's deep political and economic crisis. The lack
of progress has caused growing frustration among many opposition
leaders, who had halted large street protests and legal actions
against Mr. Maduro to join the talks.
"Maduro got up from the table of the supposed dialogue!"
opposition leader and former presidential candidate Henrique
Capriles said in a Twitter posting Wednesday. "They [the
government] don't want to fulfill any commitments."
During the talks, the opposition and the government have agreed
to hold parliamentary elections in the contested state of Amazonas,
which could give Mr. Maduro's opponents a supermajority in congress
to enact sweeping new laws and fire ministers. It is unclear
whether the elections will take place if the talks don't
resume.
Some of the more hard-line opponents of Mr. Maduro already have
called the opposition alliance, the Democratic Unity Roundtable, to
resume street protests that were attracting hundreds of thousands
of people last month, putting the government on the defensive.
"It was a mistake to abandon the street, but we can still mend
our ways," opposition lawmaker Juan Andres Mejia said in a Twitter
posting Wednesday.
Mr. Mejia has also called on the opposition-controlled congress
to resume legal procedures against Mr. Maduro for supposedly
abandoning his basic governing responsibilities.
The opposition alliance is expected to make a formal
announcement Wednesday night on whether it will be prepared to
resume the talks.
The halting of the talks came during the visit to Caracas of
Thomas Shannon, the head of political section at the U.S.
Department of State and a prominent proponent of the dialogue. Mr.
Shannon will meet with both the opposition and Mr. Maduro's
officials this week, according to the opposition leaders.
Write to Anatoly Kurmanaev at Anatoly.kurmanaev@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 23, 2016 20:05 ET (01:05 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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