Instability in Venezuela may spark migrant crisis, warns politician

CARACAS, February 11. /TASS/. Destabilization in Venezuela will trigger a bigger migrant crisis, the first vice-president of the Venezuelan National Constituent Assembly, Tania Diaz, said in an interview with TASS on Monday.

Tania Diaz, deputy head of the ruling United Socialist Party (PSUV), reiterated that before former US President Barack Obama imposed sanctions against Caracas, 5.6 million Colombians had lived in the country along with some 400,000 Ecuadorians and about the same number of Peruvians. “If Venezuela is destabilized, the migration crisis will have the same scope as in Europe,” she stressed.

“Scores of migrants are already heading to the US across Mexico,” she said. The politician sees “two options” in this situation. “In the first one we will be seeking peaceful solutions, while in the second option the whole region will be involved in a spiral of military solutions. We cannot say at the moment what the second option may result in. A war scenario which the US is now working out on the border with Colombia, means confrontation between the two countries as such,” she stressed.

On January 23, opposition leader Juan Guaido, whose appointment as parliamentary speaker had been annulled by the Supreme Court two days earlier, declared himself as acting president. On the same day, Washington recognized him as acting head of state, as did the Lima Group countries (barring Mexico), the Organization of American States, and a number of other nations among them, Australia, Albania, Georgia and Israel. President Nicolas Maduro described the developments as an attempted coup.

In contrast, Russia, Belarus, Bolivia, Iran, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Turkey came out in Maduro’s support. The UN secretary-general urged a dialogue for resolving the crisis.