Venezuelan opponent Leopoldo López called on Wednesday that a rapprochement between the governments of Venezuela and the United States should not be a “barter, an exchange, of oil for freedom.”
López warned that, without free elections, “there should be no rapprochement”, to questions from journalists before giving a conference in the Spanish city of Salamanca.
The opposition leader stressed that the US position is “to reach an agreement as long as there is a very clear route to free elections in Venezuela.”
Since earlier this month a US delegation met with the dictator of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, in Caracas, there have been speculations about a rapprochement between the two governments, although the Americans have stressed that it does not mean a change in relations or that they will buy Venezuelan oil for now in the face of the energy crisis following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
“We cannot make a barter, an exchange of oil for freedom. It is unethical to consider for Venezuelans that freedom should be sacrificed for oil that is currently controlled, abused and stolen, as well as minerals, by the dictatorship,” he added.
“Seven million Venezuelans have been expelled from our country, the biggest migration crisis the world is experiencing, deeper than that of Ukraine (...). It was not because of the result of a war or a natural disaster, but because of a tragedy of ideas, politics, because of the imposition of an authoritarian, corrupt model,” he denounced.
López also spoke about the abandonment of at least 140 militants from his party, Popular Will, in the last month after warning of internal “bad practices”.
In this regard, he said that Maduro “it is cheaper to buy an enemy than to imprison him”, while his party is “in the process of legitimizing” its authorities, since many of those elected a few years ago “have had to go into exile, or are imprisoned, or are in very difficult circumstances.”
López has been in exile since 2020 in Spain, a country to which the Venezuelan regime is demanding his extradition so that he will serve the rest of the almost fourteen years in prison that he was sentenced to in 2015 after being accused of inciting violence.
(With information from EFE)
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