U.N. envoy urges U.S. to relax Venezuela sanctions, drawing opposition rebuke
By Vivian Sequera
CARACAS (Reuters) - A U.N. envoy on Friday said U.S. and E.U. sanctions on Venezuela were worsening a humanitarian crisis and recommended the United States relax the measures, an argument the country's opposition labeled "regime propaganda."
Following a 12-day visit, Alena Douhan, a U.N. special rapporteur focusing on sanctions, recommended in a preliminary report that the sanctions be lifted and the Venezuelan government be granted access to funds frozen in the United States, United Kingdom and Portugal.
Washington in January 2019 sanctioned state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela to try to oust President Nicolas Maduro, who has overseen an economic collapse in the once-prosperous OPEC nation and stands accused of corruption, rights violations and rigging his 2018 re-election.
Maduro's government blames the sanctions for Venezuela's economic woes. Prior to blacklisting PDVSA in 2019, Washington in 2015 implemented its first sanctions on top Venezuelan government officials, and in 2017 issued some financial restrictions on PDVSA.
"Unilateral sanctions increasingly imposed by the United States, the European Union and other countries have exacerbated the abovementioned calamities," Douhan told reporters, recognizing that the economic decline started in 2014 with the downturn in oil pries and that mismanagement and corruption also contributed.
Venezuela's opposition and U.S. officials point out that the country's economic collapse began before the imposition of economic sanctions, and argue the sanctions are justified because Maduro's government would more likely use the resources for corrupt ends than to alleviate Venezuelans' suffering.
"We regret the rapporteur's imprecisions and the lack of mention of subjects like corruption, inefficiency, political violence and the use of hunger as a tool of social and political control," Miguel Pizarro, opposition leader Juan Guaido's envoy to the United Nations, wrote on Twitter.
"That is allowing oneself to be used for regime's propaganda."
U.S. Ambassador for Venezuela James Story - who is based in neighboring Colombia, as the two countries cut off diplomatic ties in 2019 - wrote on Twitter on Thursday that Venezuela's crisis was due to "the regime's corruption," noting that the sanctions exempted humanitarian goods.
(Reporting by Vivian Sequera in Caracas; Writing by Luc Cohen; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
