US sends more aid for Venezuela to Curacao, Maduro to modernize electric grid

Caracas — The United States on Wednesday sent to the Caribbean island of Curacao more than two tons of sanitary kits for the Venezuelan people, marking the first time that the island has been used to position humanitarian aid, which the Caracas government of Nicolas Maduro has so far refused to accept.

On a flight from the Netherlands that was scheduled to arrive Wednesday afternoon in Curacao, the US sent four kits of emergency health assistance with medicines and medical supplies, the US State Department said.

“The four 1,200-pound kits, which can cover the health needs of 40,000 people for three months, will help address the shortages of basic emergency supplies in Venezuelan hospitals and health centers,” the department added in its statement.

The aim is to alleviate the difficulties of the “people of Venezuela, who continue to suffer from the former Maduro regime’s corruption and gross mismanagement of the economy.”

The government in Amsterdam has provided support in delivering this aid to Curacao, an autonomous Caribbean territory linked to the Netherlands and located just a few kilometers (miles) off the western Venezuelan coast, the document stated.

The four sanitary kits were manufactured in the Netherlands and contain medicines and medical supplies, including bandages, gauze, latex gloves, thermometers and syringes, the US Agency for International Development said in another communique.

Earlier this year, the US stationed more than 540 metric tons of aid earmarked for Venezuela in Colombia and Brazil, the State Department said.

The plan to move this aid into Venezuela on Feb. 23 ended in confrontations between Venezuelan opposition members and forces loyal to the Maduro regime, which refused to allow entry into the country.

The State Department explained this new aid shipment by noting that Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who is recognized as the country’s interim president by more than 50 nations, and the National Assembly or Parliament that he heads, are prioritizing the immediate need for international humanitarian assistance.

The US will continue responding to this request and supporting the peaceful transition to democracy in Venezuela, the department said.

USAID, meanwhile, said that the Maduro regime must allow this basic aid to enter Venezuela.

The State Department added that Washington is coordinating its efforts with governments in the region and with US regional humanitarian partners to ensure secure and efficient logistics so that the aid can ultimately get to the Venezuelan people.

Meanwhile, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said Wednesday that Maduro’s administration planned to modernize Venezuela’s National Electric System (SEN) in response to the energy crisis that has resulted in numerous blackouts in recent weeks.

“We have decided on the intervention, restructuring and modernization of (state-owned utility) company Corpoelec, a restructuring that must be done hand in hand with its workers,” Rodriguez said in an address carried by the official VTV network.

Rodriguez said the electricity crisis was caused by a “criminal attack” by the opposition and the US government on the SEN that affected “infrastructure, transmission lines and power generation capacity.”

“There is no doubt about these acts of cyber sabotage,” the vice president said.

Rodriguez said the plan to address the power crisis, which began last month, called for “dealing with the national electric emergency caused by the criminal attack” and “the construction of a new system armored against these types of attacks.”

The administration, she said, created six work committees “to protect the SEN against such series of attacks” that will be part of the Electricity General Staff announced this week by Maduro.

Rodriguez said Corpoelec has been rationing electricity under a 30-day plan, which started on Sunday, “to progressively add load capacity to the electric system.”

The vice president blamed National Assembly Speaker Juan Guaido, who has been recognized as Venezuela’s interim president by more than 50 countries, for the outages, which continue primarily in the western states.

“Self-proclaimed (interim President Guaido) is asking for the people of Venezuela to be without electricity,” Rodriguez said, adding that the government would show “new evidence” about these allegations in the upcoming days.

Earlier in the day, Maduro reported in a Twitter post the gradual restoration of water and electric service “despite the attacks against” the SEN.

On Monday, Maduro fired Electric Energy Minister Gen. Luis Motta Dominguez and replaced him with Igor Gavidia, an electrical engineer with 25 years of experience in the industry who will also serve as chairman of Corpoelec.

Maduro created the Executive Secretariat of the Electricity General Staff, which will be under Interior and Justice Minister Nestor Reverol.

On Sunday, protests broke out in Caracas as residents woke to yet another blackout that affected several regions.

The latest power outages come nearly a month after the massive blackout that Venezuela experienced on March 7 that kept virtually the whole country in the dark for five days until the government managed to regain control of the situation and restore electric service.

The government said at the time that sabotage at the Guri hydroelectric complex was to blame for the blackout.

Maduro directly blamed the United States and the opposition for the alleged sabotage, claiming that “electromagnetic” attacks had been staged on the electric grid.

The opposition, however, blamed the Maduro regime for failures in the system, saying that the government’s poor management of the grid was the real cause of the outage.

The early March blackout caused about 15 deaths due to the lack of electricity at Venezuelan hospitals, the opposition claims, while officials contend that just two people died.

In Miami, an association of Venezuelan exiles in Miami on Wednesday denounced recent moves taken by Russia in support of Maduro, including deploying troops to that South American country.

Politically Persecuted Venezuelans Abroad (Veppex) also said in a statement that Moscow has adopted a belligerent tone against countries that have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim head of state.

“Russia is testing its level of influence in the region” and “allowing it to carry out its plans would be a destabilizing factor for the entire hemisphere,” Veppex said.

Veppex said a recent statement by Russia’s senate, which warned that a military intervention in Venezuela would be interpreted as an “act of aggression,” represents a “direct threat to all nations” that do not recognize Maduro as that nation’s president.

That Venezuelan exile group therefore called for a “response” that is in keeping with the “danger posed by the Russian presence in this hemisphere.”

Veppex recalled that the United States’ government is keeping “all options on the table” and that this is the time to use “the toughest (measures) given the level of the threat this represents for US national security.”

That organization urged Venezuela’s opposition-led National Assembly, whose speaker is Guaido, to declare Russian military personnel on Venezuelan soil as “non grata” and called on the population to regard as Russian soldiers as “enemies of the Venezuelan people.”

Moscow said a few days after Russian air force planes carrying dozens of soldiers landed on March 24 at the airport serving Caracas that the presence of its military personnel is governed by a bilateral technical-military cooperation agreement that dates to May 2001.

The move, however, angered the US, with National Security Adviser John Bolton issuing a stern warning.

“We strongly caution actors external to the Western Hemisphere against deploying military assets to Venezuela, or elsewhere in the hemisphere, with the intent of establishing or expanding military operations,” he said on March 29. “We will consider such provocative actions as a direct threat to international peace and security in the region.”

Separately, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said Wednesday in Beirut that the only country interfering in Venezuela is the US.

“There’s no Russian meddling in Venezuela. There’s years of military and technical cooperation. The only meddling we experience on a daily basis is that from the United States,” he told a group of reporters outside Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry.

On Tuesday, the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), a plenipotentiary body completely made up of Maduro allies whose creation in 2017 sidelined the opposition-led National Assembly, unanimously voted to strip away Guaido’s immunity from prosecution and pave the way for him to stand trial.