A Venezuelan political party this week proposed to US President Joe Biden that he promote a hostage swap between his administration and the government of Nicolás Maduro to unblock bilateral relations.
The liberal-leaning Pro-Citizens movement, led by politician and journalist Leocenis García, delivered a letter to White House advisers to recommend that citizens of interest detained in both nations be released “at the same time.”
The initiative would merit a “broad negotiation” to include “all the American hostages who are in Venezuela” and even in Russia, one of Maduro’s main geopolitical allies and whose justice system has just sentenced the basketball player to nine years in prison. American Brittney Griner, the organization said.
Perhaps the most controversial part of the idea is that the swap should include Colombian businessman Álex Saab, whom Caracas identifies as its special humanitarian envoy with diplomatic rank and who was extradited last October to Florida from Cape Verde.
Saab “has already said what he could say to the American authorities,” says the national coordinator of Pro-Citizens in his letter to Biden. “The important thing for the authorities is the information on Álex Saab, not him as a person,” García points out in the text.
The opposition to Chavismo in Venezuela and the United States Department of Justice link Saab to a network that would have used official programs in Venezuela for hundreds of millions of dollars in corrupt acts.
The political leader, usually critical of both Chavismo and the traditional opposition in Venezuela, considers that a recent precedent for this eventual exchange of hostages between the two countries is the arrest and release of Mexican General Salvador Cienfuegos, detained two years ago in Los Angeles, California.
The Mexican military officer was accused by US prosecutors of accepting bribes to work directly for a drug cartel.
“The Mexican government fought to the letter for the future of Cienfuegos and after a political agreement between President López Obrador and [el expresidente Donald Trump]in an unusual capitulation, William Barr, the former US attorney general, relented and Cienfuegos, who was detained on drug charges in the United States, was quickly dispatched to Mexico”, explains the Venezuelan politician.
“Reasonable Checkout”
The exchange idea presented by Prociudadanos comes after two rounds of talks in Caracas between delegates from the US and Venezuelan governments, with Maduro in the lead, to weigh the possibility of releasing Americans detained in the South American country and an eventual resumption of the energy cooperation, after five years of individual and sectoral sanctions by the White House.
Also read: Dialogue in Venezuela can be “oxygenated” by incorporating civil society
The meeting of Biden’s envoys at the Miraflores Palace led to the release of two Americans “unfairly” detained in Venezuela, according to Washington: Gustavo Adolfo Cárdenas, a former director of the Citgo company; and Jorge Fernández, a Cuban-American arrested in the border state of Táchira in February 2021.
In July, a notice from the State Department to its citizens became known, warning them of the risk they run in Venezuela of being arbitrarily detained.
Until then, the press reported that at least eight Americans are imprisoned in the South American nation: five former Citgo executives and three war veterans.
This situation merits “a reasonable solution,” Garcia explained in an interview with the voice of america. His proposal involves activating a US delegation including former Governor and expert negotiator Bill Richardson, Ambassador James Story and Roger D. Carstens, special presidential envoy for Hostage Affairs.
Negotiation needs very cold and reasonable people”
On the side of Chavismo, García recommends including the governor of Carabobo, Rafael Lacava, who, in the opinion of the leader of the Pro-Citizens party, interceded for the release in 2018 of the American Mormon missionary Joshua Holt, is a personal friend of Maduro, studied university in New Jersey and “is not a communist.”
Maduro has expressed in recent months his desire to resume respectful relations with the United States, which has formally ignored him as president since 2019 and recognizes as such, instead, the leader of the 2015 Parliament and opposition leader, Juan Guaidó.
Washington has relaxed some sanctions against Venezuela to favor a return to the negotiations in Mexico City, according to White House spokesmen. These new licenses have allowed companies like Chevron to negotiate directly with Maduro and Repsol and Eni to market Venezuelan crude in Europe as debt payment.
Other proposals that Garcíaa makes in his letter to Biden are that the United States “leave its rhetoric around the interim government” of Guaidó and that the OAS be involved to materialize a “viable” solution to the political and economic crisis in Venezuela. .
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