Washington. The United States on Monday denied having offered amnesty to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in exchange for his relinquishing power following disputed July 28 elections in the South American country, a State Department spokesman said in Washington.
“We have not made any amnesty offer to Maduro or others since the election,” Vedant Patel told reporters, following an article in the Wall Street Journal which indicated a proposal to pardon Maduro and his collaborators who face charges in the United States.
Washington “is considering a range of options to pressure Maduro to return Venezuela to a democratic path and will continue to do so, but the onus is on Maduro and the Venezuelan electoral authorities to come clean about the election results,” Patel added.
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) proclaimed Maduro re-elected president with 52 percent of the votes compared to 43 percent for the opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia.
But the pro-government body has not yet published the minutes of the vote count, claiming that the automated voting system had been hacked on election night.
The opposition, meanwhile, claims that González Urrutia won the election with 67 percent of the votes and compiled scanned copies of more than 80 percent of the votes on a website.
The United States, like much of the international community, is calling on Maduro’s government to publish the voting records to clarify suspicions of fraud.
The Biden administration believes that the data presented by the opposition is valid and demonstrates the opposition’s victory.
Maduro is accused in the United States of narcoterrorism.
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– 2024-08-21 00:03:02
