Any meet­ing which could oc­cur in T&T be­tween Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro and his Venezue­lan Op­po­si­tion op­po­nents would have to be held un­der the aegis of the Unit­ed Na­tions, as­sist­ed by T&T’s lead­er­ship, says for­mer diplo­mat Regi­nald Du­mas.

Du­mas ex­pressed the view af­ter the em­bat­tled Maduro on Mon­day told mem­bers of the Venezue­lan diplo­mat­ic corps in Cara­cas, his ad­min­is­tra­tion was es­tab­lish­ing con­tact with gov­ern­ments who of­fered to me­di­ate.

He said he’d spo­ken on Mon­day “at length” to Caribbean prime min­is­ters who were in New York and al­so spoke to Bo­li­vian pres­i­dent Evo Morales.

Maduro said he’d told them he was ready, to be­gin with, all of the Venezue­lan Op­po­si­tion, a “rounds of con­ver­sa­tions, di­a­logue, ne­go­ti­a­tions in Venezuela, T&T or wher­ev­er,” when or where they want them.

This fol­low­ing the cri­sis in Venezuela af­ter Na­tion­al As­sem­bly head Juan Guai­do’s re­cent move to as­sume self-de­clared pres­i­den­cy and fol­low-up ac­tion to set­tle in.

Maduro’s state­ment came amid the vis­it of a Cari­com del­e­ga­tion— in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley—to the Unit­ed Na­tions.

The team met on Mon­day with UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res fol­low­ing which Row­ley ex­pressed hope “that in the not too dis­tant fu­ture there will be a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment and a di­min­ish­ing of ten­sions in T&T’s neigh­bour­ing ter­ri­to­ry.”

Row­ley al­so said, “In com­ing days there will be work to­wards di­a­logue so that the in­ter­nal dif­fi­cul­ties in Venezuela can be ap­proached with­out in­ter­ven­tion and in­ter­fer­ence from those who may have a dif­fer­ent ap­proach.”

Row­ley re­turns to­day. In his ab­sence, oth­er Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials didn’t ven­ture word on Maduro’s will­ing­ness to meet here be­yond act­ing For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon’s view that T&T has so far been play­ing an “out­stand­ing role” in the is­sue.

She said this was ev­i­denced by Cari­com’s view on the mat­ter, mir­ror­ing T&T’s own. She said the Cari­com del­e­ga­tion’s trip to the US had gained trac­tion and the sig­nal T&T was get­ting “could on­ly be good” if Maduro was will­ing to talk to his op­po­nents.

On Maduro’s will­ing­ness to meet in T&T, Regi­nald Du­mas (al­so for­mer pub­lic ser­vice head) said, “I sup­port this type of me­di­a­tion. If prop­er­ly arranged with the ap­pro­pri­ate par­tic­i­pants, it could en­hance T&T’s im­age. But it would have to in­volve the prin­ci­pals in Venezuela, Maduro and Guai­do, and should be held un­der the aegis of the Unit­ed Na­tions. If it comes off it could be chaired by Cari­com’s chair­man as­sist­ed by T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter,”

UNC MP Gan­ga Singh said Maduro’s open­ness for a meet­ing hint­ed, “It’s clear the pre­ferred op­tion for Maduro is for him to demit of­fice and be giv­en safe pas­sage for him and his group out to a coun­try of his choice for asy­lum and free up the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process to pro­ceed in Venezuela.”

“Gov­ern­ment should be fa­cil­i­ta­to­ry and cre­ate any fo­rum to bring about peace in Venezuela. It will show T&T in a good light and T&T could emerge as a bea­con for democ­ra­cy and hu­man rights. The Prime Min­is­ter will have to use his in­flu­ence and loy­al­ty to Maduro to fa­cil­i­tate his ex­it. That would open up the democ­ra­cy and al­low for free, fair elec­tions. But any meet­ing must deal with the is­sues of star­va­tion, hu­man rights abus­es and oth­er Venezue­lan prob­lems as side­bar is­sues. But if the Prime Min­is­ter fails to in­flu­ence Maduro (ex­it), there’ll be blood on the streets of Venezuela and T&T will suf­fer col­lat­er­al dam­age.”

UNC MP Dr Bhoe Tewarie said, “I ful­ly un­der­stand Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley’s as­pi­ra­tions. Venezuela is our next door neigh­bour and it’s le­git­i­mate for T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter to want to play on the big stage es­pe­cial­ly on this is­sue where na­tion­al in­ter­ests are stake. I al­so ful­ly ap­pre­ci­ate Cari­com’s need to carve out a me­di­at­ing role and a unit­ed front in an es­ca­lat­ing cri­sis that car­ries the po­ten­tial to as­sault peace in our re­gion. But I think the time has passed, it’s now too late. I’d be sur­prised if it hap­pens. I be­lieve the Gov­ern­ment has missed the boat.

“Guai­do will not come here or any­where else as an Op­po­si­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tive. He’s set­tling in: de­clared him­self in­ter­im pres­i­dent, ap­point­ed a Cab­i­net, plus his OAS am­bas­sador and is al­ready recog­nised by 20 coun­tries. Oth­er Venezue­lan Op­po­si­tion lead­ers will not now treat with Maduro as pres­i­dent. For the time be­ing, they’re unit­ed be­hind Guai­do,”

“When Maduro said he’d be will­ing to meet with Guai­do in T&T or else­where, he’d have im­me­di­ate­ly telegraphed that he’s com­fort­able with T&T’s Gov­ern­ment, who’s his al­ly. This would im­me­di­ate­ly make Guai­do hes­i­tant. He’d al­so have telegraphed the rep­u­ta­tion of T&T as a sup­port­er of the Maduro dic­ta­tor­ship and this would have been re­in­forced in the minds of Venezue­lans. This may raise some scep­ti­cism. Maduro’s an­nounce­ment would al­so have con­veyed the im­pres­sion that he, Maduro and PM Row­ley are hav­ing an on-go­ing con­ver­sa­tion. This might be in­ter­pret­ed in some quar­ters as a plan to buy time for Maduro when the ma­jor­i­ty of Venezue­lans want him out.” • See Page A21