After veto in BRICS, Venezuela calls ambassador to Brasília for consultations

The Venezuelan government said on Wednesday it had summoned its ambassador to Brazil for consultations amid Brazil’s veto on Venezuela’s access to BRICS and questions being raised over President Nicolas Maduro’s re-election.

Like other Latin American countries, in addition to the United States and the European Union, Brazil has not recognized the results of the July 28 elections due to the lack of a transparent investigation. The opposition claims the victory of its candidate Edmundo González Urrutia and condemns fraud.

At the center of the controversy: former Chancellor Celso Amorim, an adviser to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whom parliament plans to declare “persona non grata.” Amorim was an observer at the presidential elections and said that the decision in BRICS was a response to the fact that Venezuela “broke trust” after those elections.

“The national and international community is informed that, following instructions from President Nicolás Maduro Moros, it has been decided to immediately summon Ambassador Manuel Waddell for consultations,” a statement from the Foreign Ministry said. The Brazilian chargé d’affaires was summoned to Caracas.

Brazil’s ambassador to Caracas, Glivania Oliveira, is on leave. Itamarati, the foreign ministry, is not currently planning to repeat the call for consultations. “We will continue the assessment,” a confidential Foreign Ministry official told AFP.

The blockade on Venezuela was imposed during the summit of the BRICS bloc, which Brazil co-founded in 2009, which was held in Kazan, Russia, between 22 and 24 October.

“We condemn the irrational behavior of Brazilian diplomats, who adopted a policy of blockade in violation of the approval of the rest of BRICS,” Caracas said.

– “Masters of the North” –

The Foreign Ministry statement also expressed “strong rejection of the repeated interference and uncivil statements by authorized spokespersons of the Brazilian government”, emphasizing Amorim as “an emissary of North American imperialism” who ” Has dedicated itself to spreading value judgments “about processes that suit only Venezuelans.”

Amorim had said earlier on Tuesday that Venezuela was reacting “inconsistently” to blocking the country’s entry into the bloc that also includes Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates. Are.

Maduro urged Lula, an old ally from the time of his predecessor Hugo Chávez, to speak out on the veto.

Brazil’s president has distanced himself from Caracas, and even called Maduro’s government a “very unpleasant regime” with an “authoritarian bias.”

The head of the parliament, powerful Chavista leader Jorge Rodríguez, announced that he would request the plenary session to declare Amorim “persona non grata” after he accused him of “interference” in international inquiries into previous elections and of serving the United States. do. ,

“You behaved, maliciously, more like an interlocutor of the United States government than the role assigned to you by President Lula,” Rodríguez wrote in a statement issued shortly before the State Department statement.

He said, “That is why their interference in matters that concern only us makes their position exactly the same as the designs of an aggressive empire.”

He said, “We will ask the Plenary Session of the National Assembly of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to declare him persona non grata and we do not care about the agreements and reconciliations he has made with his masters in the North.”

The next session of Parliament is scheduled for this Thursday, October 31.

JT/MBJ/DGA/BA/CJC