{"id":30808,"date":"2019-01-27T20:22:45","date_gmt":"2019-01-27T20:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30808"},"modified":"2019-01-27T20:22:45","modified_gmt":"2019-01-27T20:22:45","slug":"venezuelas-maduro-rejects-eu-ultimatum-on-fresh-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30808","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela’s Maduro rejects EU ultimatum on fresh elections"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro<\/a> has rejected calls<\/a> by European nations to hold early elections, calling the opposition leader’s self-declaration as president constitutionally null.<\/p>\n

“Nobody can give us an ultimatum,” Maduro said in an interview with broadcaster CNN Turk aired on Sunday, a day after\u00a0France, Germany and Spain\u00a0threatened<\/a> to recognise opposition leader Juan Guaido<\/a> as president if elections were not announced within eight days.<\/p>\n

EU\u00a0foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini also issued a statement that said the bloc as a whole could recognise Guaido if steps towards new elections were not taken “over the next days”.<\/p>\n

Maduro’s foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, had already rejected the deadline during an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Saturday. <\/p>\n

“Venezuela will not allow anyone to impose on us any decision or\u00a0order,” Arreaza said, adding that Caracas has “excellent friends” it can call on for support to defend itself.<\/p>\n

Washington, which was among the first to recognise<\/a> Guaido as leader of the oil-rich country, urged<\/a> the world on Saturday to “pick a side” on Venezuela<\/a> and financially disconnect from Maduro’s government.<\/p>\n

“Now, it is time for every other nation to pick a side. No more delays, no more games. Either you stand with the forces of freedom, or you’re in league with Maduro and his mayhem,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told<\/a> the UNSC on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Guaido stunned Venezuelans on Wednesday by declaring himself interim president before cheering supporters in the Venezuelan capital, buoyed by massive anti-government protests<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An industrial engineer by training, Guaido was elected to the Nation Assembly in 2015.<\/p>\n

The 35-year-old also served as the head of the comptroller commission that investigations allegations of government corruption.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on Saturday, Maduro seemed to go back on his\u00a0decision<\/a>\u00a0to expel US diplomatic staff from Venezuela.<\/p>\n

The embattled leader said on Wednesday that Caracas would break off diplomatic relations with the US and gave it a 72-hour deadline to pull out its diplomats from the country.<\/p>\n

Maduro told CNN that he was open to dialogue with President\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>, which he said was unlikely but not entirely impossible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maduro has by and large retained<\/a> the loyalty of the country’s armed forces, except for the defection of a military attache to Washington who pledged allegiance to\u00a0Guaido.<\/span><\/p>\n

Colonel Jose Luis Silva declared himself a supporter of Guaido, saying, “He is the only legitimate president.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has rejected calls by European nations to hold early elections, calling the opposition leader’s self-declaration as president constitutionally null. “Nobody can give us an ultimatum,” Maduro said in an interview with broadcaster CNN Turk aired on Sunday, a day after\u00a0France, Germany and Spain\u00a0threatened to recognise opposition leader Juan Guaido as president…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":30809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}