The Venezuelan President ratified his commitment to the fight against corruption in the South American nation. | Photo: Presidential Press Office
Caracas, April 17 (RHC)-- The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, sent this Monday a message to his U.S. counterpart, Joe Biden, indicating that "if you want, I want" and ratifying his commitment to dialogue.
"We continue talking with them. I will never close the door to dialogue with anyone. I tell the negotiators to tell the president the following message: If you want, I want. If you don't want to, I don't want to. I will never close the door to dialogue with anyone," he emphasized during his program Con Maduro +.
The president assured that Venezuela will follow its own economic model and that it will not be part of the blackmail exercised by the North American country on the sale of oil.
He stated that the so-called license 44 of the US Government is "colonialist" because it intends, in his opinion, to "monitor the national oil industry" and that with or without it, Venezuela will continue to move forward. License 44 authorizes transactions in Venezuela's oil and gas sectors.
"They continue blackmailing that they are going to remove License 44, they want to do economic damage to Venezuela", he said, recalling that "they never complied with a single comma of the signed agreement, never. At this point, the United States of America signed an agreement and should have lifted all the sanctions against Venezuela, all of them. That is the truth."
The Head of State specified that the U.S. Government "asked us a year ago that it wanted to start conversations with us in a reserved and private manner" and that Venezuela has always respected the reserved and private character of the same, reaching the signing of agreements that had as their core "the total lifting of all the illegal and criminal sanctions against Venezuela. I don't say it myself, the signed documents say it."
There were more than nine meetings: six meetings in Qatar, with the good offices of the Emir of Qatar, and three meetings in Milan. enezuela was represented in those meetings by Dr. Jorge Rodriguez, an expert in this type of conversations; by fellow governor Hector Rodriguez; by the attorney general of the republic, Dr. Reinaldo (Muñoz), and by the national commissioner of human rights, Larry Devoe", he detailed.
We have made claims within the framework of these conversations, but outside the framework of these conversations, an agreement was reached to achieve the release of the political hostage, Venezuelan diplomat, Alex Saab, last December 20. It was an exchange, they returned our kidnapped and tortured diplomat, and we returned to them a group of CIA agents, some of them had come to invade Venezuela. A swap as it is done in the international world", he added.
The president warned that the U.S. intends that Venezuela "lives on licenses they give" and informed that at noon this day "there was a videoconference with them, I am not going to say who were among them, I only say that Jorge and Héctor were on our side."
"They want to do economic damage to Venezuela. I say to the Venezuelans, to the workers, to the businessmen, to the businesswomen, and to all our people, we have taken our own course of work, economic model, with threats and sanctions, we learned to work and to recover", he stressed.
Another issue raised by President Maduro is the situation in the Middle East, adding to other facts of the current situation, and warning that these are actions of "the Zionist, neo-fascist right wing, with the support of the United States of America".
The president pleaded for diplomacy and rationality to prevail and for the conflict not to escalate. An escalation of the conflict, product of the Nazi madness of (Benjamin) Netanyahu, could lead us to a third world war and Venezuela advocates for peace, rationality, diplomacy and truth", he reiterated.
The President of Venezuela ratified his commitment in the fight against corruption in the South American nation by notifying that "now there have been new captures, new revelations" regarding the Pdvsa - Crypto corruption scheme.
I could say that, if a year ago we struck the first blows, from one to ten we reached three, now we have advanced to seven, eight, to the level of discovery with evidence, irrefutable testimonies, of the responsibility of the highest hierarchs that we have captured and who are in prison, who must be punished with the maximum penalties established by the Venezuelan Criminal Code. Whoever falls," he asserted.
The Venezuelan President indicated that "we are capturing people". He also thanked the investigative capacity of the Attorney General's Office and the State security forces, since "all the last ones captured have revealed the plot, evidence, names, they had formulas to hide the money in crypto-assets".
Likewise, he reiterated the proposal presented to the Venezuelan people, so that they may debate it and draw a conclusion, on "imposing the maximum penalties that can be imposed, according to Venezuela's customary constitutional law", ratifying that the country's Constitution must be respected.
I have a first document that some experts, led by the Executive Vice President, Delcy Rodríguez, (...) made a good document of a comparative study of life imprisonment in different countries of Latin America, Europe, United States; and it is an important debate, because we have to strengthen the State, the punitive capacity because, experts in the matter say, it generates the deterrence effect, because he who is going to take the step that should not be taken should think once, twice and three times, because he could end up rotting in jail", he emphasized.
