Vol. 80/No. 12      March 28, 2016

 

Cuban, Venezuelan governments denounce renewal of US sanctions on Caracas

 
President Barack Obama signed a “national emergency” executive order March 3 renewing for a second year a 2015 order declaring the Venezuelan government of President Nicolás Maduro “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” The order was broadly condemned by governments across Latin America, and last April Obama had to acknowledge, “Venezuela is not a threat to the U.S.”

“Once more, the empire demonstrates that its aggressive essence and contempt for our peoples have not changed,” Cuban Vice President Miguel Díaz-Canel told Maduro and others at a meeting commemorating the third anniversary of the death of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in Caracas March 5. “We emphatically demand the revocation of the executive order against Venezuela, we call on the international community to join us in this just demand.”

“We don’t accept impositions or aggressions,” Maduro said March 9, announcing the recall of Venezuela’s top diplomat from Washington.

Since the election of Chávez in 1998, Washington has backed efforts to overturn the Venezuelan government — including a failed 2002 military coup against Chávez — and end that country’s close diplomatic ties and beneficial trade relations with revolutionary Cuba.
 
 
Related articles:
‘Cubans will defend our sovereignty, revolution’
 
 
 
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