Macron stands as a mediator between the Government and the opposition in Venezuela to promote dialogue

Paris tomorrow hosts a meeting between the parties and also contacts between the French president and Gustavo Petro and Alberto Fernández

MADRID, 10 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Government and opposition in Venezuela have met this Friday in Paris, convened by the 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 crisis policy 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 planned between the negotiators of the Nicolás Maduro regime and the Unitary Platform, which brings together the main opposition parties, with the head of the Chavista National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, and the chief opposition negotiator Gerardo Blyde, at the head of 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 entire process: the Colombian Gustavo Petro and the Argentine Alberto Fernández. Precisely, Petro has recently visited Caracas and after his arrival at the Casa de Nariño he has opted for the reestablishment of relations, broken under the presidency of Iván Duque.

What is sought, they maintain from the Elysee, 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, focused mainly on the humanitarian situation in the country.

It is in this context, they say from the French Presidency, that we must see the greeting that took place on Monday during the COP27 in Egypt between Macron and Maduro, in which the French president summoned him to speak later and the Venezuelan maintained that France "has to play a decisive role."

In the Elysee they emphasize that there has been no change of position, that Maduro has not been recognized as president of Venezuela since his re-election in 2020, but also that the French president has been defending the need for dialogue since then.

Maduro "is no longer the legitimate president" but it is with him and his regime "with whom we must have a dialogue and with whom we are going to try to push for the resumption of negotiations," they point out, emphasizing that in all these years the Government French has maintained contacts with both the government and the opposition and keeps its embassy open in Caracas.

Likewise, in the French Presidency they refer to the contacts that the Joe Biden Administration itself has maintained in recent months with the Maduro regime, including a visit by a delegation to Caracas, and the fact that it has partially eased the sanctions .

Precisely, Maduro took the opportunity at COP27 to greet the United States special envoy for climate, John Kerry, although the State Department has made it clear that it was an "unplanned" exchange and that he caught the former head of American diplomacy "by surprise".

"It is in this context that the president tries to support the resumption of a dialogue so that there are political guarantees in the shortest possible time that will then lead to fair and transparent elections," a spokesman for the Elysée summed up in statements to the press.

In the French Presidency they consider that there is "a lot of potential" in the current circumstances so that from the contacts this Friday in Paris there may be "concrete gestures" by Caracas, something that has not happened to date. It will be based on what happens, they point out, when France will decide whether to modify its position.