Delegates from Maduro and the opposition agreed to “make all efforts before the authorities and institutions, national and foreign” to “obtain the legitimate funds of the Republic that are frozen in the international financial system” and use them in social projects.
They ask the UN for “the design, establishment and implementation of a single trust fund” to which that money would go, according to the document, read by Dag Nylander, representative of Norway, a country that facilitated the talks.
The unblocked resources “will be progressively incorporated as contributions to the fund”, intended for health and education, recovering a deficient electrical network and attending to the emergency generated by rains that caused floods and landslides, the text explains.
The document does not specify the amount of funds to be released, but Jorge Rodríguez, head of the Maduro government delegation, says that the agreement will recover 3 billion dollars.
“There are more than 20,000 million dollars dammed,” said Rodríguez, president of the Parliament, controlled by Chavismo. “Through this agreement we are rescuing more than 3,000 million,” he added.
The fund, said the opposition negotiating leader, Gerardo Blyde, “will be administered by the UN with a programmatic framework of projects and works to be executed.”
“Correct address”
Core issues remain pending on the table, such as the next presidential elections, scheduled for 2024. The opposition’s main demand has been to set conditions for those elections, after accusing Maduro of fraudulently re-elected himself in 2018.
“Our mission” is “to achieve the democratic conditions for alternability to take place,” Blyde insisted this Saturday.
However, a senior source in the United States government considered that the agreement represents “important steps in the right direction.”
(Reuters)
