Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced that there will be a meeting between him and the presidents of Brazil and Mexico to seek political solutions to the Venezuelan crisis. The meeting was scheduled to take place in an exclusive interview with CNN .
A bilateral meeting between the Colombian leader and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was scheduled for this Wednesday (25), but ended up being canceled due to incompatible agendas, according to Brazilian government sources.
“We will meet here in New York, and then in Mexico, at the presidential change, to build a common position for Brazil, Mexico and Colombia on the intractable problem in which Venezuela has found itself,” he told CNN before the meeting with Lula in the United States was canceled.
Lula will also travel to Mexico for the inauguration of Mexico’s president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, next week. According to him, the purpose of the three countries is “to have a political solution in Venezuela.” “And the political solution in Venezuela belongs to Venezuelans,” he emphasized.
The Venezuelan president said that the governments of Colombia, Brazil and Mexico agreed that without the publication of electoral records that corroborate the results of the presidential election, the alleged victory of Nicolás Maduro will not be recognized.
“We agreed on one point with President Lula: without the presentation of the minutes, there is no recognition. We reached this agreement with the Mexican government,” he said.
When asked about the situation in Venezuela, the Colombian president said he considered that the elections in the country were not free and that the process prior to the election was “erroneous”.
“The preliminary election process was erroneous because it put a society in a position to compete for political power without freedom. There was not even freedom for the opposition, because its main candidate did not participate and this is a problem today because: who do you talk to about the opposition?” he asked.
For him, there was also no freedom from the Maduro government, which is the target of international sanctions. “A country under economic sanctions is not free,” he pointed out.
“Everything that had been said in Mexico, Barbados and Colombia itself, so that there would be free elections, did not happen,” he said, regarding dialogues and negotiations such as the Barbados Agreement, facilitated by Brazil and signed at the end of last year, so that there would be political guarantees for the election.
Petro defined the impasse situation in the country as a “trap”: “Now we are in a trap, because there is an opposition that feels like it is in government but is not in government, and a government that did not allow the minutes to be seen, and therefore cannot legitimize the elections, but is in government. And these are two completely polarized and distant positions,” he assessed.
He also highlighted the role of the US elections scheduled for November, which could have an impact on the Venezuelan process.
This content was originally published in Exclusive CNN: Petro announces meeting with Lula in Mexico to discuss Venezuela on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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