the conversations injanuary of 2019 in a secret way at the beginning, and then they became public. but it was his determination at the very beginning of his interim presidency to reach out to the norwegians, to start that process. we have always been willing to engage in negotiations. this is not new. and i read some statements by analysts saying that now is the time for negotiation. we have been engaged in negotiations for 20 years with all of the support. i don t think that there is a case with more participation of external support for negotiations and the case of venezuela. but the results are there. maduro has always used, and chavez before him, always used negotiations to their benefit. so what we need is a very true and clear commitment not to profit, not to oil, not to the interests of external interests, but to the interests that s what we expect from the international community. and i believe that that s something very reasonable that we are asking. and, yes, stephen, it s to
of venezuelans right now inside the country, they are literally going hungry. their health care system is broken. it would make a huge difference to them if sanctions were lifted immediately. and maybe the opposition isn t really winning any support amongst many ordinary venezuelans now with this insistence that sanctions must continue. well, i think that s not understanding, stephen, with all due respect, the origin of the crisis. the origin of the crisis was not sanctions. the migration crisis, the economic crisis, the humanitarian crisis started way before the imposition of sanctions. so the reality is that maduro is a criminal, he s a crook, he s corrupt. and all of the administration of a hitherto very wealthy country we were producing 3.7 million barrels of oil 20 years ago, now we re producing less than 500,000 barrels of oil per day. venezuela is no longer an oil economy, and that s all because of the corruption of maduro, not because
Stephen Sackur speaks to Leopoldo L?opez . His efforts to topple Nicol?as Maduro s socialist regime have been thwarted. Has Venezuela s pro-democracy movement.
of going into internal politics in the us, or in europe, for that matter. we go out to every free world, to every congress, to every parliament. we want to talk to the socialists, to the conservatives, to everybody, to engage in our struggle for freedom. right. i mean, i talked about the political tide turning against you. it s notjust in the united states. look at latin america. you know, you ve lost the support of key allies in the recent past. we could talk about neighbouring colombia, which is hugely important to venezuela, where the government now is engaging with maduro, has opened the border, cooperating with maduro. look at mexico, look at peru. look at the election of lula in brazil. these are all now governments that do not want to isolate venezuela. they want to reach out to venezuela and renew a dialogue. again, the tide is against you. yes. and we believe that dialogue is something that we need to continue to push. and we have been doing that. juan guaido started
that you, in a sense, were the mentor tojuan guaido, who back in 2019 was declared by the national assembly as the interim president of venezuela by the opposition movement. you were a key player in that, but i m just wondering how disappointed you were at the end of last year, december2022, when a clear majority of that self same national assembly decided that the experiment with guaido hadn t worked. they basically said guaido s finished and it s time to negotiate with maduro. did you personally feel betrayed by that decision? yes, i believe it was a very unfortunate decision. it was unconstitutional. and we gave a strong hope that there was no need to give the legal representation, international recognition and the capacity to continue from that trench the fight towards freedom in our country. but this is the way things work, with the legitimacy.