CARACAS: Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who has claimed he defeated Nicolas Maduro in last month’s election, said Monday he was ready to negotiate a transition — and asked the incumbent to “step aside.”
“Mr. Nicolas Maduro, respect what all Venezuelans have decided... You and your government should step aside... I am ready for dialogue,” Gonzalez Urrutia, a retired diplomat, said in a video message posted on social media.
“Every day that you hinder the democratic transition, Venezuelans suffer from a country in crisis, and without freedom. Clinging to power only makes the suffering of our people worse. Our time has come.”
Since the contested election, Gonzalez Urrutia and fellow opposition leader Maria Corina Machado — who was barred from running herself — have been in hiding as prosecutors have opened an investigation against both of them.
Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab threatened to formally charge them Monday.
Gonzalez Urrutia has not been seen publicly in weeks, while Machado appeared at an opposition rally in Caracas on Saturday.
Saturday’s protest was the latest since the July election, in which Maduro claimed a third, six-year term.
The country’s CNE electoral council declared Maduro the victor within hours of polls closing, giving him 52 percent of ballots cast, and ratified the vote in early August. It did not provide a detailed breakdown.
The opposition says its own tally of polling-station-level results showed Gonzalez Urrutia, 74, had won more than two-thirds of the vote.
The CNE claimed to have been the victim of a cyberattack on election night, but the opposition and third-party election observers such as the Carter Center have said there is no evidence such an event occurred.
Maduro’s victory claim has been rejected by the United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries.
Election-related protests have claimed 25 lives so far, with nearly 200 injured and 2,400 arrested since election day, according to official sources.
Maduro has accused the opposition of fomenting a coup, telling his supporters on Sunday: “They will never be able to defeat us, because we carry with us the force of history, the force of the nation, the force of God. We won.”
Venezuela’s national legislature on Tuesday will discuss a bill purportedly “against fascism,” the second law in a series of measures prepared by the government in the wake of Maduro’s contested reelection.
Last week, the National Assembly of Venezuela adopted a law regarding NGOs which critics say will be used to crack down on dissent.
The government also intends to discuss a law regulating social media, a move following the ban of the platform X for 10 days in the country and a boycott of messaging app WhatsApp spurred by Maduro.
Last week, United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk said he was troubled by the use of counterterrorism legislation to enforce arbitrary detentions.
“Criminal law must never be used to limit unduly the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association,” Turk said in a statement.
Venezuela opposition candidate asks Maduro to ‘step aside’
https://arab.news/yne65
Venezuela opposition candidate asks Maduro to ‘step aside’
- Since the contested election, Gonzalez Urrutia and fellow opposition leader Maria Corina Machado have been in hiding
- Opposition says its own tally of polling-station-level results showed Urrutia had won more than two-thirds of the vote
UK’s Starmer calls Trump’s remarks on allies in Afghanistan ‘frankly appalling’
- Britain lost 457 service personnel killed in Afghanistan, its deadliest overseas war since the 1950s
LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called US President Donald Trump’s comments about European troops staying off the front lines in Afghanistan insulting and appalling, joining a chorus of criticism from other European officials and veterans.
“I consider President Trump’s remarks to be insulting and frankly appalling, and I’m not surprised they’ve caused such hurt for the loved ones of those who were killed or injured,” Starmer told reporters.
When asked whether he would demand an apology from the US leader, Starmer said: “If I had misspoken in that way or said those words, I would certainly apologize.”
Britain lost 457 service personnel killed in Afghanistan, its deadliest overseas war since the 1950s. For several of the war’s most intense years it led the allied campaign in Helmand, Afghanistan’s biggest and most violent province, while also fighting as the main US battlefield ally in Iraq.
Starmer’s remarks were notably strong coming from a leader who has tended to avoid direct criticism of Trump in public.
Trump told Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria” on Thursday the United States had “never needed” the transatlantic alliance and accused allies of staying “a little off the front lines” in Afghanistan.
His remarks added to already strained relations with European allies after he used the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos to again signal his interest in acquiring Greenland.
Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel condemned Trump’s remarks on Afghanistan, calling them untrue and disrespectful.
Britain’s Prince Harry, who served in Afghanistan, also weighed in. “Those sacrifices deserve to be spoken about truthfully and with respect,” he said in a statement.
’WE PAID IN BLOOD FOR THIS ALLIANCE’
“We expect an apology for this statement,” Roman Polko, a retired Polish general and former special forces commander who also served in Afghanistan and Iraq, told Reuters in an interview.
Trump has “crossed a red line,” he added. “We paid with blood for this alliance. We truly sacrificed our own lives.”
Britain’s veterans minister, Alistair Carns, whose own military service included five tours including alongside American troops in Afghanistan, called Trump’s claims “utterly ridiculous.”
“We shed blood, sweat and tears together. Not everybody came home,” he said in a video posted on X.
Richard Moore, the former head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence service, said he, like many MI6 officers, had operated in dangerous environments with “brave and highly esteemed” CIA counterparts and had been proud to do so with Britain’s closest ally.
Under NATO’s founding treaty, members are bound by a collective-defense clause, Article 5, which treats an attack on one member as an attack on all.
It has been invoked only once — after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, when allies pledged to support the United States. For most of the war in Afghanistan, the US-led force there was under NATO command.
POLISH SACRIFICE ‘MUST NOT BE DIMINISHED’
Some politicians noted that Trump had avoided the draft for the Vietnam War, citing bone spurs in his feet.
“Trump avoided military service 5 times,” Ed Davey, leader of Britain’s centrist Liberal Democrats, wrote on X. “How dare he question their sacrifice.”
Poland’s sacrifice “will never be forgotten and must not be diminished,” Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said.
Trump’s comments were “ignorant,” said Rasmus Jarlov, an opposition Conservative Party member of Denmark’s parliament. In addition to the British deaths, more than 150 Canadians were killed in Afghanistan, along with 90 French service personnel and scores from Germany, Italy and other countries. Denmark — now under heavy pressure from Trump to transfer its semi-autonomous region of Greenland to the US — lost 44 troops, one of NATO’s highest per-capita death rates.
The United States lost about 2,460 troops in Afghanistan, according to the US Department of Defense, a figure on par per capita with those of Britain and Denmark. (Reporting by Sam Tabahriti and Elizabeth Evans in London, Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen and Terje Solsvik in Oslo, Malgorzata Wojtunik in Gdansk, additional reporting by Andrew MacAskill, Muvija M and James Davey in London and Bart Meijer in Amsterdam; Writing by Sam Tabahriti; editing by Gareth Jones, Andrew Heavens, Ros Russell and Diane Craft)
