Kerry Says Venezuela Leaders Need to Talk to People, Stop Arrests
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday called on Venezuelan leaders to start talking to their own people and stop a wave of opposition arrests.
"It seems to me what has to happen now is for (the) Venezuelan leadership to deal with their own people," Kerry told reporters.
"They need to reach out and have a dialogue, and bring people together and resolve their problems," he said.
"We need a dialogue within Venezuela, not arrests and violence in the streets and persecution against young people who are voicing their hopes for a future."
After talks with his Colombian counterpart Maria Holguin, the top U.S. diplomat revealed Washington was also working with Bogota and other countries to see if some kind of mediation might be possible in Venezuela's political crisis.
"It's obviously already proven very difficult for the two sides to bring themselves together by themselves," Kerry added.
On Wednesday the Venezuelan opposition spurned crisis talks called by the government of President Nicolas Maduro aimed at trying to halt three weeks of protests that have left 17 dead.
Students and the opposition have hit the streets of the capital Caracas and other cities for the past three weeks denouncing rampant street crime and protesting shortages of basic goods and inflation, as well as a government crackdown on demonstrators
Venezuela has also arrested one opposition leader and reportedly issued a warrant for the arrest of another.
Amid discussions in Congress on whether to impose sanctions on Venezuela's leaders, Kerry said it was right to begin "thinking about those incentives, or those measures, that are appropriate for actions that have been taken ... that have a profoundly negative effect on people's rights on their freedom."
Kerry also denounced the Venezuelan leadership's "fiction" for blaming Washington for fomenting the unrest, "even though we've had absolutely literally no intrusive engagement or effort."
Source: Agence France Presse
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