Venezuela crisis: Spain to look to EU to decide stance over Guaidó's disputed presidency
Thursday, January 24, 2019 @ 12:47 PM
SPAIN'S government is on the fence over whether or not to officially recognise Juan Galdó as president of Venezuela after his surprise coup knocked Nicolás Maduro from power, with foreign affairs minister Josep Borrell saying his cabinet is reluctant to 'take impulse decisions'.
Borrell says Spain will wait to see what the European Union's verdict is before making an official statement, in the interests of 'unity' across the continent, or at least the 28-country bloc.
Foreign ministers from the EU-28 are set for an urgent meeting in the next few hours to 'evaluate the situation', Borrell reveals.
He has recently come out of the so-called Ágora Europa convention in Madrid's Casa de América, which his Portuguese counterpart Augusto Santos Silva also attended, but left just before the end to attend to a call from Spanish president Pedro Sánchez from the Davos International Forum, and another from the US embassy in Spain to find out its stance vis à vis Guaidó.
According to Borrell, during the last few EU foreign ministers' meetings, members had 'continually warned' of the possibility of a major political crossroads in Venezuela and how the 'determining power', once it happened, would 'lie in the hands of the Armed Forces' – but that, at that point, Europe was unsure 'where it was'.
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