20 August 2019Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro with national assembly chief Diosdado Cabello, who has reportedly been speaking to Trump advisers
Nicolás Maduro (click here) has confirmed top Venezuelan officials have been talking to members of Donald Trump’s White House, after reports his second-in-command had been negotiating his downfall with the United States.
“I confirm that for months there have been contacts between senior officials from Donald Trump’s government and from the Bolivarian government over which I preside – with my express and direct permission,” Venezuela’s authoritarian leader said in a televised address on Tuesday night.
“Various contacts through various channels,” Maduro added.
Maduro’s remarks came after two reports in the US media claimed Diosdado Cabello, one of Venezuela’s most powerful and feared men, had been engaged in “secret communications” with Trump officials....
...Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at the Chatham House thinktank, said: “I think what the US is trying to do is some sort of psy ops thing, trying to rattle people within Maduro’s administration.”
But on Tuesday Maduro confirmed contact with the US, which he painted as proof that he had been seeking ways “for president Donald Trump to truly listen to Venezuela and the truth of the 21st century Bolivarian revolution”.
Earlier in the day Trump told reporters: “We’re talking to various representatives of Venezuela. I don’t want to say who, but we are talking at a very high level.”...
Diosdado Cabello has been around for a long time. None of these people materialized out of nowhere. The crisis in Venezuela is due to the fall in oil prices.
6 January 2013
Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez’s allies (click here) staged a show of unity on Saturday, re-electing the ruling party’s Diosdado Cabello as parliamentary speaker, while their president battles cancer in Cuba.
The closing of ranks by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) came as it emerged as all but certain that illness will keep Chavez from being sworn in to a new six-year term on Thursday as scheduled.
“The president will continue being president beyond January 10, nobody should have any doubt about that,” said Cabello after his election, accusing the opposition of fomenting a “coup d’etat.”
Vice President Nicolas Maduro called the swearing-in a “formality” and said he too would stay on in office without taking any oath until there was an opportunity to do so.
Cabello’s re-election was intended in part to answer persistent rumours of a power struggle within the regime during Chavez’s more than three-week absence, the longest stretch in his 14-year presidency.
“We will never defraud the people and we will get on our knees to defend the proposal made by comandante Chavez, I swear it,” Cabello said as he took his oath of office....
May 6, 2019
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (click here) pressed Sunday for Russia to get out of Venezuela, while his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, called on Washington to “abandon its irresponsible plans” in the crisis-wracked country.
The push and shove set the stage for a Pompeo meeting with Lavrov in Finland this week, and belied the conciliatory tone taken by U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday after what he said was “a very good conversation” with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The top level contacts follow the failure of a U.S.-backed uprising on Tuesday aimed at ousting Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, that Pompeo has blamed on Russia....
