Nicolas Maduro, last August. LEONARDO FERNANDEZ VILORIA (Portal)
Norway has announced that the Unity Platform and the government of Venezuela will return to negotiations that began in Mexico in 2021. They relocated to Barbados, where attempts to find an amicable solution to the ongoing Venezuelan conflict had already ended. The first meeting of this new phase will take place tomorrow, Tuesday, in the Caribbean country, the mediators said in a statement. This step was expected weeks ago. Although contacts between the parties have cooled in the last 11 months, almost since their last meeting in Mexico and the signing of an agreement, the influence of the United States could once again be evident in its direct talks with Nicolás Maduro’s representatives in Doha Process that appears to have stalled.
The first signs of these arrangements came with the United States’ decision to resume flights to Venezuela to deport undocumented Venezuelans. Then the National Electoral Council offered its late technical support for the opposition primaries that will take place this Sunday, the 22nd, disqualifying the main candidate who leads the rest by more than 40 points, María Corina Machado.
This should be one of the topics on the agenda of these talks that will resume in Barbados, but it is an issue on which Chavismo does not want to give in, as it has not shown itself positive towards moderately competitive elections in which it loses could power. And a few months ago, the head of the Chavista delegation, Jorge Rodríguez, had already rejected European election observation. Setting a date for the presidential election would be another commitment to emerge from these meetings, and it was expected that it could be mid-2024. According to data from agencies such as Portal and Bloomberg in recent days, the easing of sanctions would be aimed at allowing the operation of more foreign companies linked to PDVSA to begin paying off the state-owned company’s debts, similar to Chevron and the European companies ENI and Repsol. In addition, individual sanctions against high-ranking officials could be lifted.
Washington is once again stepping up its efforts to defuse the crisis in Venezuela in a complicated energy scenario, as was the case in 2022 when Russia started the war in Ukraine. According to Bloomberg this Monday, Biden would try to prevent the war between Israel and Hamas from becoming a regional crisis that would affect the price of a barrel of oil.
There are themes that seem to have stuck. A year ago, the opposition and Chavismo signed a social agreement to create a fund to address the humanitarian emergency in Venezuela, which continues as the economic downturn continues and the migration of Venezuelans continues. A total of $3 billion frozen in government spending abroad would be made available to the United Nations to carry out projects in health, public services and nutrition. This deal has not yet materialized.
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