President Joe Biden is open to increasing pressure on Venezuela if Nicolás Maduro fails to take concrete steps toward democratic elections, the Biden administration said on Thursday, as Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro visited the White House.
Petro came to Washington hoping the Biden administration would express a willingness to relieve sanctions on Maduro, whose grip on power has thrown the South American country into economic turmoil and the region into a humanitarian and migration crisis. But U.S. officials said they had not yet seen concrete steps taken by Maduro toward democracy to justify any relief.
“We’d like to see more,” John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council in the White House, told reporters at a press briefing before the meeting began.
Biden officials say the administration has already demonstrated its willingness to ease sanctions in exchange for progress toward democracy, noting its decision last fall to grant sale and production licenses to Chevron in Venezuela after Maduro agreed to resume talks with the country’s opposition. But Kirby said the administration could also ratchet up sanctions if no action is taken.
“We’ve long been clear that we would review our sanctions policies in response to constructive steps by the Maduro regime, and if the Venezuelan parties can make meaningful progress and return to democracy in the country,” Kirby said. “But I think we’ve also made very, very clear that we’re not afraid to take action should the Maduro regime fail to negotiate in good faith, or follow through on its commitments.”
Biden hosted Petro in the Oval Office, where they spoke with the press at the beginning of their meeting of their shared commitment to democracy and the fight against climate change. The U.S. president has long referred to Colombia as the “linchpin” of the region and one of America’s closest allies.
Petro, a former M19 guerrilla leader that in August became Colombia’s first leftist president, is meeting Biden a few days before he is expected to host a summit in Bogota to discuss a solution for the prolonged Venezuela crisis. Comments he has made in the past few days have led observers to believe that Petro aims to convince the Biden administration that Maduro can be talked into holding free and fair elections if Washington allows the sanctioned estate-run oil company PDVSA to regain access to the international financial system.
Petro’s aims, however, are not at all that clear for many inside Colombia, who are wondering what it is exactly that the Colombian president aims to achieve in Washington.
Kirby said the United States was supportive of the conference, but did not say whether a U.S. delegation would attend.
“We don’t know what President Petro is up to. We do not know if he is going to meet with President Biden as Maduro’s foreign minister, or if he is going to defend Colombia’s interests,” said Francisco Santos Calderon, Colombia’s former ambassador to the United States and former vice president. “The only thing he has said about his trip is: ‘Less sanctions, more democracy,’ as if there were democracy in Venezuela, and the truth is, there is no democracy there. So it seems that he is acting more as Maduro’s chancellor than the president of 50 million Colombians.”
Petro’s meeting with Biden also caused alarm in Florida among some circles, where the Colombian president is eyed with suspicion.
In a written statement, Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio warned Biden to be careful when dealing with Petro, claiming that he is “an agent of chaos.”
“Petro has been the foremost Latin American advocate of ‘engagement’ with narco-dictator Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and puppet dictator Miguel Díaz-Canel in Cuba,” Rubio said in a press release. “It’s a fool’s errand, because internationally ostracized dictators have nothing to gain from increasing stability in the region.”
Petro’s efforts to try to promote a negotiated solution that would allow the regime to regain legitimacy in the international community is seen with suspicion among Venezuelan circles, given Caracas’ track record of unfulfilled promises.
Last year, a series of meetings between the regime and U.S. officials in Caracas led Washington to allow Chevron, a U.S. company, to restart operations in Venezuela in exchange for Maduro’s commitment to renew talks with opposition leaders in Mexico City.
The diplomatic effort did lead to the liberation of a number of U.S. citizens unjustly held in Venezuela, but the talks in Mexico quickly stalled, and remain at a standstill.
Antonio de La Cruz, executive director of the Washington-based consultancy firm Inter American Trends, said Maduro is interested in getting a commitment from Washington to allow PDVSA to conduct transactions in the international banking system, given that oil sales they have been conducting through smugglers in defiance of U.S. oil sanctions have proven to be disastrous.
“That is Maduro’s new strategy, who before had said that he was not going to Mexico because the next phase in (the talks) is the electoral agenda, and they were refusing to go unless they were given access to the $3 billion in humanitarian aid that had been agreed as part of the deal for the Chevron license last year,” de La Cruz said.
At some point, the regime realized their objective of getting access to humanitarian funds was too difficult to achieve, so they changed the goal to getting Washington to lift the sanctions, de La Cruz said.
“In particular, they are aiming to get Washington to allow PDVSA to have access to the Swift banking payment system, given that their oil smuggling operations, which were handled in cash and cryptocurrency, have led “to huge corruption problems, those payments don’t leave records,” he said.
The Maduro regime has launched a massive anti-corruption crusade among its own ranks after discovering that the proceeds of at least $3 billion in oil shipments never reached the country.
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