A solution to Venezuela’s political impasse will only be sought at a later stage of the negotiations.
of Venezuela the administration and the opposition reached a significant agreement in their negotiations on Saturday, the news agencies AFP and Reuters report. The parties jointly asked the UN to establish a fund through which Venezuelan funds frozen abroad will be channeled to help the country’s humanitarian crisis.
It is reportedly about three billion euros, which are to be directed to education, health care, food security, flood preparedness and the electricity grid. In total, twenty billion euros of Venezuelan assets have been frozen.
The news is seen as an important step in a broader easing that could, in the best case scenario, ease the refugee crisis plaguing the entire American continent and significantly increase world oil production.
of Venezuela out of a nation of around 30 million inhabitants, up to seven million have fled the country’s economic and social collapse abroad since 2015, the vast majority of them at the very beginning of the mass migration.
Venezuela’s opposition has not recognized Nicolás Maduro position as the country’s president after January 2019. Also, almost all American and European countries considered that the ruling socialist party rigged the show elections in May 2018 and that Maduro was therefore not entitled to a new term of office.
Negotiations have taken place in Mexico through Norway.
On Saturday the agreement reached represents “hope for all of Latin America,” said Mexico’s foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard According to AFP.
However, the settlement did not yet take a position on any kind of political solution.
Still, the US Department of the Treasury commented, according to AFP, that these are “important steps in the right direction to restore democracy”, and based on that, the ministry granted the country’s second largest energy company, Chevron, permission to expand its oil production activities in Venezuela and import crude oil from Venezuela to the United States.
The extended license is valid for six months. The continuation depends on whether the United States judges that the Maduro regime has respected the agreement.
“We look forward to the parties reaching lasting agreements that will pave the way for a free and fair presidential election in 2024,” US Treasury Secretary Antony Blinken wrote on Twitter.
The United States has promised to lift the sanctions it imposed on Venezuela in exchange for steps towards the country’s democratization.
in Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but export sanctions and the decline of the oil industry under the control of the populist and nationalist Socialist Party have reduced oil production to a fraction of its calculated capacity.
This year, Venezuelan oil has become an even more important potential source of energy for Western countries, as the war in Ukraine has turned off Russia’s taps.
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