France wants to relaunch negotiations between the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the opposition. Both parties will be present this Friday at the Paris Peace Forum.
These negotiations will take place only a few days after the brief exchange between French Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Venezuelan Nicolas Maduro in the halls of COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
According to the Venezuelan opposition, it is not a question of negotiations, but of making contact. A meeting between the heads of delegations, the President of the National Assembly Jorge Rodriguez and Gerardo Blyde of the unitary platform, is scheduled for Friday in Paris. Negotiations between the government and the Venezuelan opposition have been suspended for more than a year.
France hopes to help revive them, with the help of the Colombian and Argentinian presidents who will also be present at the Peace Forum. The French position is delicate: officially, it does not recognize President Nicolas Maduro because it believes, like the United States, that the 2018 elections were marred by fraud. But in Paris, we recognize that the regional context has changed with, in particular, the arrival of left-wing governments in Colombia and Brazil.
But the French initiative in favor of the Venezuelan negotiations is also guided by economic interests: faced with rising energy prices, France is trying to diversify its sources of oil supply. It is precisely for this purpose that the United States is in the process of getting closer to Venezuela, which is home to one of the largest oil reserves in the world.
►Also read: Exchange between Macron and Maduro at COP27: “France would like to play the role of mediator”