The U.K., Spain, France, Austria and Sweden have all announced that they are recognizing Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s interim president and are urging him to hold a new presidential election after President Nicolas Maduro defiantly rejected an ultimatum by European countries to call snap elections.
” UK alongside European allies now recognises @jguaido as interim constitutional president until credible elections can be held. Let’s hope this takes us closer to ending humanitarian crisis,” Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said in a statement on Twitter.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told reporters in Madrid on Monday that “we are working for the return of full democracy in Venezuela: human rights, elections and no more political prisoners.”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, speaking Monday to France Inter Radio, urged Guaido to call an early presidential election that will ensure “the Venezuelan crisis ends peacefully.”
Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom told Swedish broadcaster SVT the vote that brought Maduro to power was not a “free and fair election.”
Several European nations on Jan. 26 said they would recognize Guaido as interim president unless a plan for fresh elections was announced within eight days.
Maduro quickly rejected the deadline, saying “Nobody can give us an ultimatum.”
The U.S. and more than half a dozen Latin American nations and Albania have already thrown their support behind the opposition.
Meanwhile other countries – including Russia, Iran, Turkey, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua – have backed President Maduro.
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