Washington DC.- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia has won Venezuela’s disputed presidential election, according to information published by the Agence France-Presse news agency.
“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States, and more importantly to the Venezuelan people, that Edmundo González Urrutia won a majority of the vote in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election,” Blinken said in a statement.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) proclaimed Maduro re-elected president for a third six-year term just after midnight on Sunday, with 51 percent of the votes compared to 44 percent for his main rival.
The opposition claims that it has copies of more than 80% of the minutes and that González Urrutia obtained 67% of the votes.
Maduro proposes resuming dialogue
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday proposed resuming negotiations with the United States, a country that rejected his re-election and supports the opposition’s allegations of fraud.
“I have always been in dialogue,” Maduro posted on social media X.
“If the United States government is willing to respect sovereignty and stop threatening Venezuela, we can resume dialogue,” he added.
The socialist leader, however, made possible contacts conditional on the “fulfillment” of a memorandum of understanding signed in September of last year in direct negotiations between Venezuela and the United States in Qatar, in parallel to a process of dialogue between Chavismo and the opposition in Barbados on the road to the presidential elections.
Maduro shared a copy of the Qatari memorandum of understanding.
“Following the holding of presidential elections and the inauguration of the duly elected president, the United States unblocks the assets of the Venezuelan government currently frozen” and “lifts all sanctions,” the document states.
The White House had said it was willing to review its sanctions against Venezuela, which include an embargo on oil, gas and gold from the Caribbean country, if there were “free elections.”
Protests have erupted following allegations of fraud by the opposition, which have left at least 11 dead since Monday, according to human rights organisations, and a thousand arrests.
Maduro blames Machado and González Urrutia for the violence and said on Tuesday that they should “be behind bars.”
With information from AFP,
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