Government and opposition in Venezuela met this Friday in Paris, convened by French President Emmanuel Macron, who wants to take advantage of the reconfiguration that is taking place in Latin America and force the parties to sit down to dialogue with a view to resolving a political crisis that has led the Ibero-American country to a dramatic humanitarian situation.
The framework chosen will be the Paris Forum for Peace in which a closed-door meeting is scheduled between the negotiators of the regime of Nicolás Maduro and the Unitary Platform, which brings together the main opposition parties, with the head of the Chavista National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, and the opposition chief negotiator Gerardo Blyde, leading the respective delegations.
In addition, Macron will take the opportunity to meet with two presidents of the region that Paris considers «particularly involved» in this whole process: the Colombian Gustavo Petro and the Argentine Alberto Fernandez. Precisely, Petro has recently visited Caracas and after his arrival at the Casa de Nariño has bet on the reestablishment of relations, broken under the presidency of Iván Duque.
What is sought, according to the Elysée, is to «create a dynamic for the resumption» of the dialogue process in Mexico, suspended since October 2021 and sponsored by the host country and Norway. This process obtained very limited results, centered mainly on the humanitarian situation in the country.
It is in this context, according to the French Presidency, that the greeting between Macron and Maduro on Monday during the COP27 in Egypt should be seen, in which the French president called on him to speak later and the Venezuelan maintained that France «has to play a decisive role».
In the Elysee they stress that there has been no change of position, that Maduro is still not recognized as president of Venezuela since his reelection in 2020, but also that the French president has been defending since then the need for dialogue.
Maduro «is no longer legitimate president» but it is with him and his regime «with whom we must have a dialogue and with whom we will try to push for the resumption of negotiations», they point out, stressing that in all these years the French government has maintained contacts with both the government and the opposition and keeps its embassy in Caracas open.
Likewise, the French Presidency refers to the contacts that Joe Biden’s own Administration has maintained in recent months with the Maduro regime, including a visit of a delegation to Caracas, and the fact that it has partially eased the sanctions.
Precisely, Maduro took the opportunity at COP27 to greet the U.S. Special Climate Envoy, John Kerry, although the State Department has made it clear that this was an «unplanned» exchange and that it caught the former head of U.S. diplomacy «by surprise».
THE OBJECTIVE, FAIR ELECTIONS «It is in this context that the President intends to support the resumption of a dialogue so that there are political guarantees in the shortest possible time that will lead to fair and transparent elections», summarized a spokesman of the Elysée in declarations to the press.
The French Presidency considers that there is «much potential» in the current circumstances for the contacts of this Friday in Paris to produce «concrete gestures» on the part of Caracas, something that has not happened so far. It will depend on what happens, they point out, when France will decide whether to modify its position.
