MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine FM defends resumption of full ties with Venezuela

We should not be obsessed with repeating the speech of the dominant press, according to which human rights violations happen in only “two or three countries,” Cafiero argued

Argentina is planning to upgrade its diplomatic ties with Venezuela after former President Mauricio Macri's decision in 2015 not to appoint an ambassador to Caracas.

”We had a chargé d'affaires and now we are going to have an ambassador. (...) What we want is to move forward in recomposing the diplomatic relationship with that country,“ Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero told the Argentine Senate Tuesday.

The top diplomat also said there were human rights violations in Venezuela just like in any other country in the region.

The government of President Alberto Fernández has raised the name of Oscar Laborde to become the new ambassador.

Cafiero also pointed out it was ”very harmful to lose that relationship“ with Venezuela during the Macri government because it led to Argentina being deprived of first-hand information on the events in that country and it was also left without a direct ”link with Argentines living in Venezuela and with Argentine entrepreneurs who develop business there.“

President Fernández had said last month during Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso's visit to Casa Rosada that many of Venezuela's problems ”have been dissipating with time“, thanks, in part, to the work of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, and to the agreements reached within the framework of the International Contact Group on Venezuela.

”What the president takes is what the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, has said. Bachelet stated that there have been advances with respect to Venezuela,“ Cafiero explained Tuesday.

He added, however, that ”there is indeed still a long way to go,“ but progress has also been made ”from the electoral point of view.“
Cafiero admitted that ”in Venezuela, there are human rights violations, [but] there are also human rights violations in Colombia; in Chile, there were human rights violations; in our country, we have human rights violations...“

The minister insisted that ”we should not be obsessed with only one, because otherwise, all we are doing is repeating a frame of the dominant press where we only accuse two or three countries.“ He also recalled that Argentina had made recommendations ”on the need to move forward with the improvement of the human rights policy” in Venezuela.