Colombia hosts international conference to discuss Venezuela | Nicolas Maduro News

President Gustavo Petro calls on the leaders of 19 countries and the EU to rebuild the path to peace in Latin America.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has welcomed world leaders to Bogotá for a day-long conference to discuss the political situation in Venezuela, where critics accuse Nicols Maduro’s administration of stifling opposition.

Representatives from 19 countries and the European Union gathered at San Carlos Palace on Tuesday, where Petro opened the meeting with a speech.

In it, he called on the international community to lift sanctions against Venezuela, but he also pushed for Maduro to hold democratic elections in the country.

Latin American history is in our hands, Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, told diplomats.

He portrayed Latin America at a crossroads: Either participants could mark a path that leads to war and the deconstruction of democracy, or we can rebuild the path to peace and democracy.

Representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States attended the conference, which was aimed at reviving stalled talks between the Maduros administration and Venezuela’s political opposition.

The two sides previously met in Mexico City to broker a solution to the country’s political stalemate, but those talks broke down last December.

None of the opposing parties were present at Tuesday’s conference. But the opposition Democratic Unitary Platform coalition expressed support for the meeting, although some factions questioned Colombia’s role as mediator.

Since its 2018 presidential elections, Venezuela has faced a divided government. Maduro was overwhelmingly re-elected for a second six-year term, but only after some of Venezuela’s most prominent opposition parties were barred from participating.

This led critics of Maduro’s socialist government to declare the election illegitimate. After Maduros’ inauguration in January 2019, Juan Guaid, the opposition leader and then president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, issued a declaration establishing a state of emergency. He also named himself interim president in place of Maduro.

Some countries, like the United States, have chosen to recognize Maduros’ opposition government and impose heavy sanctions on Venezuela.

However, in recent months Latin America has seen a wave of left-wing leaders elected to high-level positions in government, leading some countries to resume relations with the Maduros government.

They include Colombia, which restored diplomatic ties under Petro, and Brazil, which renewed ties under leftist President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, who was sworn in in January.

Guaid himself lost much of the opposition’s support, and in December opposition members voted to dissolve his government and remove him from the post of interim president.

Nevertheless, on Monday, Guaid walked across the border from Venezuela to Colombia in an attempt to meet diplomats at Tuesday’s conference.

The Colombian Foreign Ministry, however, announced that immigration authorities had escorted Guaid to Bogotá El Dorado airport because he had crossed the border irregularly.

Boarding a plane bound for the US city of Miami, Guaid denounced his treatment as an extension of the repression he allegedly suffered under the Maduro government. The persecution of the dictatorship unfortunately spread to Colombia today, he said in a video posted on Twitter.

But on Tuesday, Petro issued a rebuke of statements by former opposition leaders.

Mr. Guaid was not expelled, he wrote on Twitter. It is better that the lie does not appear in politics. Mr. Guaid had an agreement to go to the United States. We allowed it for humanitarian reasons despite the illegal entry into the country.