The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, expressed this Thursday his willingness to be a mediator in the escalation of tensions between the United States and Venezuela to seek a solution through dialogue.
“I’m thinking that before Christmas arrives, I may have to talk to President Trump again to find out how Brazil could contribute so that we have a diplomatic agreement and not a fratricidal war,” Lula said.
In a conversation with journalists, the president announced that he had already spoken with his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, to find out what cards had been put on the table in the negotiation with the United States, and it was clear that the tensions could be resolved “without war.”
“It was possible to negotiate without war, so I am always worried about what is behind,” said Lula, after insisting that it must be explained what interests there are in generating a conflict in a region of peace, like Latin America.
“What are the interests of others that people don’t know yet?” he asked.
The word “gives much more results”
Along these lines, Lula appealed to his previous experience as a mediator by remembering that he was one of the creators of the Group of Friends of Venezuela and tried to be an interlocutor between the Government of then President Hugo Chávez and the Administration of George W. Bush to reduce tensions.
“I do the same now with Trump and Maduro (…) I believe a lot in words, in the power of persuasion, in the power of conviction,” added the South American president.
In his opinion, diplomacy “gives much more results” than warmongering positions. “I am available to both Venezuela and the United States to contribute to a peaceful solution on our continent,” he said.
US aggressions
Donald Trump ordered on Tuesday the “total blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela” and has maintained a military deployment since last August in Caribbean waters.
President Nicolás Maduro has said that the country has been facing a siege for 25 weeks with this military escalation, used by Washington as an excuse to combat drug trafficking.
Maduro described the US argument as a “lie” and “fake news.” «That drug trafficking thing is ‘fake news’, a lie, a pretext. Since they cannot say that we have a weapon of mass destruction, since they cannot say that we have chemical weapons, nuclear rockets, they invent a pretext to create another Afghanistan, to create another Libya,” said the Venezuelan president.
Meanwhile, Russia warned the US this Thursday to refrain from committing a “fatal error» against Venezuela and has reiterated its support for the Government of constitutional President Nicolás Maduro.
