Venezuela takes center stage at OAS special session

Crisis-torn Venezuela took center stage at the Organization of American States on Tuesday as a senior US diplomat flew to Caracas for high-level talks amid a worsening political and economic impasse.

Undersecretary of State Thomas Shannon will meet with government officials, opposition leaders and members of civil society while in Caracas, a State Department spokesman said.

It follows talks between Secretary of State John Kerry and Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez on June 14 at an OAS general assembly meeting in the Dominican Republic dominated by the crisis in Venezuela.

The OAS permanent council is holding two special sessions on the situation, including a debate on Thursday on whether Venezuela's leftist government is upholding democratic norms enshrined in the organization's Democratic Charter, which complements the main OAS rules text.

The Democratic Charter is a binding document that spells out what democracy entails and entitles the OAS to intervene diplomatically if a constitutional crisis is deemed to pose a threat to democracy in a member country.

As a last resort, a country can be suspended from the OAS for failing to comply with the charter.

Former Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero addressed the first of the sessions, urging support for a mediation effort that he and two other former Latin leaders are spearheading.

He pledged "full impartiality" in the quest to open a dialogue between President Nicolas Maduro's government and an opposition that dominates the National Assembly and is seeking to remove Maduro from office by means of a constitutionally mandated recall referendum.

"We are in the phase of exploration to build the pillars of a solid and consistent dialogue," Zapatero said, asking the 34-nation regional group to give mediation "an opportunity" to work.

Rodriguez, the Venezuelan foreign minister, had invited Zapatero to brief the ambassadors to offset Thursday's session on whether to invoke the OAS charter, which her government bitterly opposes.

Maduro's ambassador has asked that that session be cancelled, insisting that OAS secretary general Luis Almagro overstepped his authority in convening it.

Venezuela's main opposition grouping, meanwhile, issued a statement calling for the democratic charter to be invoked to help "resolve the Venezuelan crisis in a peaceful manner and reestablish the constitutional order that the government of Nicolas Maduro has altered."

The sessions come amid a deepening crisis in a South American country once known for its vast oil wealth, with outbreaks of looting and protests over food shortages raising the specter of a violent upheaval.

Soaring crime, runaway inflation and a sharply contracting economy, worsened by falling oil prices, have fueled the drive for a recall referendum as a way out of the crisis.

- Deepening impasse -

But the former bus driver and handpicked successor to the late Hugo Chavez has vehemently opposed what he sees as a legislative coup.

Zapatero, former presidents Leonel Fernandez of the Dominican Republic and Martin Torrijos of Panama have sought to open a dialogue between the two camps, so far with little apparent success.

Opposition and government representatives held tentative indirect talks in the Dominican Republic in mid-May with the former leaders as mediators, but made no progress.

Responding to the crisis, Almagro invoked the OAS's democratic charter on May 31, publishing a scathing report on the human rights situation in Venezuela.

The charter enables the OAS to address the "alteration of constitutional order" in a member country that "seriously impairs" democracy.

The opposition accuses Venezuelan authorities of curtailing freedom of expression and jailing dozens of its leaders and activists for political reasons, among other charges. The government denies the accusations.

- 'Door to intervention' -

If only 18 member states vote in favor, the OAS could decide after Thursday's session to take diplomatic measures to help stabilize Venezuela.

"It is a door to the intervention that the member states have rejected," Venezuela's ambassador to the OAS Bernardo Alvarez said in a letter to Almagro asking that the session on Thursday be cancelled.

The Venezuelan opposition, which has no voice in the OAS debate, was dismissive of Zapatero's mediation efforts.

"Tell the truth about the process of dialogue in Venezuela, that it doesn't exist because Maduro has broken the constitutional cord and does not yield to democratic solutions to the crisis," said opposition deputy Luis Florido, who heads the National Assembly's foreign policy committee.

Source: AFP