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Maduro reaches out to Trump on Twitter
CARACAS, Feb 20, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro took
to the US president’s favorite medium, Twitter, on Monday to ask him to start
a dialogue between the two countries.
“@RealDonaldTrump campaigned pledging to promote non-interference in the
domestic affairs of other countries. It’s time to keep your pledge,” Maduro
wrote, encouraging Trump to hold a meeting in Washington or Caracas.
Maduro and senior government officials, including Attorney General Tarek
William Saab, have alleged that the US is orchestrating an alleged plan for a
“military invasion” of Venezuela from neighboring Colombia.
“The military bombing, the military invasion, the blood and fire occupation
of a peaceful country like Venezuela are being planned,” Saab charged last
week, an allegation Colombia has flatly denied.
On a recent tour of Latin America, top US diplomat Rex Tillerson floated
the idea of slapping sanctions on Venezuela’s oil exports, the source of 96
percent of the country’s revenues.
Tillerson met in Bogota with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.
The United States has already imposed financial sanctions on Venezuela,
forbidding its citizens and companies to negotiate debt issued by the Maduro
government and the state oil company PDVSA.
Maduro has assured that he will travel to Lima in April for the Summit of
the Americas, which Trump will attend.
But the Peruvian government announced that it will not allow Maduro to
attend, on the grounds that he has broken with his country’s democratic
institutional order.
BSS/AFP/GMR/0845 hrs