Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will be part of a Cari­com team at an in­ter­na­tion­al meet­ing on the sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela sched­uled for Mon­te­v­ideo, Uruguay on Thurs­day. He will be joined by Mia Mot­t­ley, Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos and Cari­com Chair­man Dr Tim­o­thy Har­ris, Prime Min­is­ter of St Kitts and Nevis.

Plans for the meet­ing were con­firmed in a state­ment is­sued late yes­ter­day fol­low­ing a spe­cial emer­gency meet­ing of the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment held via video con­fer­ence. It was de­cid­ed that the three Prime Min­is­ters who led talks in New York with the Unit­ed Na­tions should rep­re­sent the re­gion in Uruguay.

The gov­ern­ments of Mex­i­co and Uruguay have called for the con­fer­ence with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the main coun­tries and in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions that hold a neu­tral po­si­tion to­wards Venezuela. The pur­pose is to lay the foun­da­tion for es­tab­lish­ing a new mech­a­nism for di­a­logue that, with the in­clu­sion of all Venezue­lan forces, will con­tribute to restor­ing sta­bil­i­ty and peace in that coun­try.

How­ev­er, even as plans were be­ing fi­nalised for the Mon­te­v­ideo meet­ing yes­ter­day, Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do said turned down of­fers from the pres­i­dents of Mex­i­co and Uruguay to ne­go­ti­ate with Nico­las Maduro.

In a let­ter to both pres­i­dents, Guai­do urged them to back Venezuela’s strug­gle, say­ing to re­main neu­tral aligns them with Maduro.

“At this his­tor­i­cal mo­ment that our coun­try is go­ing through, to be neu­tral is to be on the side of the regime that has con­demned hun­dreds of thou­sands of hu­man be­ings to mis­ery, hunger and ex­ile — in­clud­ing death,” he said.

Guai­do de­clared him­self in­ter­im pres­i­dent last week and has vowed to top­ple Maduro’s ad­min­is­tra­tion, which he la­beled a “dic­ta­tor­ship.” His claim to the pres­i­den­cy is backed by the Unit­ed States and oth­er west­ern­na­tions.

The op­po­si­tion’s pri­or­i­ty is to end Maduro’s grip on pow­er and ush­er in a tran­si­tion by hold­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions, Guai­do said in the let­ter to Uruguayan Pres­i­dent Tabare Vazquez and Mex­i­co’s Pres­i­dent An­dres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The Unit­ed States has al­so re­ject­ed of­fers from Mex­i­co, Uruguay and the Vat­i­can to me­di­ate a di­a­logue.

A de­fi­ant Maduro re­mains dug in, blam­ing the White House for open­ly back­ing what he calls a coup to re­move him from pow­er and ex­ploit his coun­try’s vast oil wealth. He re­tains sup­port from pow­er­ful al­lies, in­clud­ing Rus­sia and Chi­na, but is grow­ing in­creas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed as more na­tions back Guai­do.

Yes­ter­day he con­tin­ued a show of strength that has seen him criss­cross Venezuela to over­see mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es as he vows to de­fend his so­cial­ist gov­ern­ment no mat­ter the cost.

“We’re in a his­toric bat­tle,” Maduro told sev­er­al hun­dred troops stand­ing in for­ma­tion around ar­mored ve­hi­cles. “We’re fac­ing the great­est po­lit­i­cal, diplo­mat­ic and eco­nom­ic ag­gres­sion that Venezuela has con­front­ed in 200 years.”

The mil­i­tary’s top lead­er­ship is back­ing Maduro, though an­a­lysts warn that rank-and-file troops frus­trat­ed by their coun­try’s eco­nom­ic and hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis may not share that un­wa­ver­ing loy­al­ty.