The Uruguayan government announced on Thursday it will not fund the return trip or to Turkey or any third country, of former Guantanamo prisoner, Jihad Ahmad Dhiab who went missing for over a month and this week turned up at the Uruguayan consulate in Caracas, Venezuela.
Despite objections from Brazil and Paraguay, Uruguay next Saturday 30 July will transfer to Venezuela the rotating chair of Mercosur for the second half of the year, as indicated in the “group's rules and regulations”.
Two nephews of Venezuela’s powerful first lady Cilia Flores, confessed to trying to smuggle 800 kilograms of cocaine into the US, according to prosecutors in the politically-charged case. The court filings by prosecutors shed new light on the case that has sounded alarm bells about high-level corruption and drug trafficking by Venezuela’s political elite at a time of increasing economic and political turmoil in the country.
Paraguay announced officially that it will not be attending the Common Market Council of Mercosur in Montevideo next 30 July, if the agenda includes the transfer of the group's presidency to Venezuela.
Mercosur is again split over Venezuela because Paraguay, and apparently Brazil, have not been consulted regarding the decision to hand the pro tempore presidency of the block to Venezuela in July, as was agreed in Montevideo by Uruguay and Argentina.
Brazilian interim president Michel Temer will be absent from the next Mercosur summit scheduled to take place in Montevideo, and this decision is considered a strong message to the Venezuelan government of president Nicolas Maduro that will be taking the group's chair for the next six months.
Veteran U.S. diplomat Tom Shannon spoke for nearly two hours with Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro on Wednesday to re-start relations between the ideologically opposed governments amid a punishing economic crisis in the oil rich country.
Addressing the OAS Permanent Council, former Spanish president Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said that reconciliation is an indispensable and essential challenge to overcome the current confrontation situation in Venezuela, and although it will be a long, difficult process, he recommends dialogue efforts should continue.
Judge Richard Concepcion ordered Peru's first lady and the president of the ruling Nationalist Party, Nadine Heredia, not to leave the country in order to answer charges of suspected money laundering in the electoral campaigns of 2006 and 2011.
United States Secretary of State John Kerry announced high-level talks to ease tensions with Venezuela's populist government on Tuesday, just hours after he backed calls for a referendum that could force President Nicolas Maduro from office. Kerry said the talks would start immediately in Caracas and be led by Thomas Shannon, a veteran of U.S. diplomacy in the region. Attempts last year at dialogue between the ideological foes were stalled by Venezuela's deepening crisis.