AFP
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced yesterday that he was moving Foreign Minister Rafael Ramirez to serve as his United Nations envoy.
The move, which sees former communications minister Delcy Rodriguez appointed new chief diplomat, was announced on the eve of Venezuela joining the UN Security Council on January 1 as a temporary member on a rotating basis, representing Latin America.
Maduro said that in his new post, Ramirez will have “the greatest responsibility of defending world peace.”
“From any post, I will fight with honesty and firmness in defense of our country,” Ramirez said on Twitter after his appointment.
Ramirez, a 51-year-old engineer by training, had only served as foreign minister since September 3. He had previously headed the oil ministry since 2002 and was president of the state oil company PDVSA from 2004 through this year.
In November, Ramirez unsuccessfully sought a cut of 2mn barrels of oil in an Opec meeting to stop a big drop in the price of oil, which accounts for 96% of the income of Venezuela, which holds the world’s largest reserves of crude.
Castros congratulated: Maduro, a frequent critic of the United States, also congratulated the Castro brothers on Cuba’s rapprochement with Washington, but warned that the embargo on the island would remain for a long time.
This month’s historic announcement that the United States and Cuba were restoring diplomatic relations after half a century of hostility undercuts the stridently anti-American stance Maduro has adopted as his country slides into a deepening economic crisis.
Venezuela had long found in its close ally Cuba a comrade in its anti-American diatribe, but the dynamic has now changed.
“Much more than good news is the real possibility that the United States recognises the sacred right of Cuba to be free and sovereign,” Maduro said in a letter to President Raul Castro published by Cuban media.
“There is still a long way to go before Washington will recognise that we are no longer its backyard, to end the criminal blockade” of Cuba, in force since 1962, Maduro added.
As part of the agreement, the United States released three Cuban agents it had held since 1998 who were part of the so-called Cuba Five, while Havana released an unidentified spy and US contractor Alan Gross.
“We celebrate with infinite joy the completion of the final release of the Cuban Five, thus closing one of the many chapters of the United States’ interventionist and criminal policy,” Maduro wrote.
Castro took over from his ailing brother Fidel in 2006.
Venezuela has been Cuba’s main political and economic ally since the late President Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999.
