FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the Trump administration has created a "short-term mechanism" to help fund key Venezuelan government services, such as police and sanitation.
"They were facing a fiscal crisis. They needed money immediately to fund the police officer, the sanitation workers and the daily operations of the government ," he told lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today.
Rubio indicated that the money would come from sanctioned Venezuelan oil being sold at market prices. He also noted later that a portion of the proceeds would go to fund an audit process to ensure the money is being spent in this way.
"This is a short-term mechanism in which the needs of the Venezuelan people can be met through a process that we have created, where they will present every month a budget of, this is what we need to finance. We will provide them from the beginning what this money cannot be used for. And they have been very cooperative in this regard ," he explained in his opening remarks.
Rubio also added that the US will establish a diplomatic presence in Venezuela "very soon."
"I have informed some of you that Laura Dogu, who was our ambassador to Nicaragua in the past and to Honduras, will take over the Venezuelan Affairs Unit, initially in Bogota, Colombia, but ultimately in Caracas," Rubio explained, during a Senate hearing on the US operation that led to the capture of the country's then-president, Nicolas Maduro.
Dogu, a career diplomat, is the current Charge d'Affaires in the Venezuela Affairs Unit, which had been operating from Colombia since the suspension of US-Venezuela diplomatic relations in 2019.
“We already had 70 local employees maintaining that structure, but we have a team on the ground that is evaluating it, and we think that very soon we will be able to open a US diplomatic presence on the ground, which will allow us to have real-time information and interact, by the way, not only with regime officials, with the interim authorities, but also with members of civil society, the Opposition ,” Rubio added.
Lini një Përgjigje