WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th March, 2021) The United States plans to multilaterally increase pressure on Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro by working with partners around the world to bring about the electoral solution to the political crisis in the country, a senior US administration official told reporters.
"The United States is going to continue to increase the pressure. It's going to expand that pressure multilaterally to ensure that those that are guilty of human rights abuses, that are robbing the Venezuelan people, that are engaged in rampant criminal activity really find no quarter nowhere until they sit down to the table in earnest and make decisions that lead toward free and fair elections in the country," the official said during a phone briefing Monday. "What we are focused on is making sure that we are working very closely and coordinating very closely with the European Union, with our friends and allies in Latin America and the Caribbean to make sure that we are driving a consensus view of how we can be most effective at exerting pressure on the regime."
The US did not recognize Maduro's victory in the 2018 election. It views opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim Venezuelan president and introduced a series of sanctions affecting largely the country's oil industry. Caracas has denied all US allegations and accused Washington of working with Guido to overthrow the country to seize its natural resources.
