Venezuela and Nicaragua Crisis on Today’s OAS Agenda

The second and last day of the OAS General Assembly session in Washington is now underway where the crisis in Venezuela and Nicaragua are being discussed.

HAVANA TIMES – The OAS General Assembly, the most important annual meeting of the organization that brings together the countries of the Americas, began Tuesday its second and final day in Washington, where it will discuss a draft resolution that could initiate the process of suspension of Venezuela.

The United States and the so-called Lima Group – formed by 14 other countries critical of Nicolas Maduro – have negotiated a harsh resolution to pressure Maduro, whose draft includes an article that, if approved today, would mean the beginning of a suspension process for Venezuela. Something Maduro has said he could care less about.

Today, a declaration on Nicaragua is also to be discussed, presented on Monday amid growing pressure for the OAS to deal with a crisis that already left over a hundred dead and that had initially been left off the agenda.

The text was presented by Nicaragua itself and the United States and does not condemn the Ortega government for the deadly repression of protesters since mid-April. Instead it just makes a lukewarm call for an end to all violence.

OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro has been a key ally of Ortega, pushing for gradual electoral reforms that will allow him to remain in power despite the massacres his government has perpetrated against peaceful student demonstrators who have garnered much support form the general population.

The OAS is made up of the 35 countries of the Americas, but Cuba never asked for its reactivation after the suspension that was imposed on it in the early 1960s, due to its alignment with the Soviet bloc, which was lifted in 2009. It therefore convenes with 34 members.