Venezuela reopens borders with Brazil and Aruba

Venezuela is reopening its borders with Brazil and the Caribbean island of Aruba, Venezuela’s Economy Vice President Tareck El Aissami said yesterday.The government of President Nicolas Maduro shut those borders in February amid an opposition campaign to bring humanitarian aid into the country, which is suffering from a hyperinflationary economic collapse amid a power struggle between Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaido.“We want to convert it into a peaceful border region,” El Aissami said in a state television address. “We have received assurances that our sovereignty will be respected and that there will not be interference in matters that should be dealt with by Venezuelans.”El Aissami did not specifically reference the maritime and air borders with the other nearby Dutch Caribbean islands Curacao or Bonaire, or the land border with neighbouring Colombia, which were also closed in February.Many Latin American and European countries, including Brazil, Colombia and the Netherlands, recognised Guaido as Venezuela’s rightful leader after he invoked the country’s constitution to assume an interim presidency in January, arguing Maduro’s 2018 re-election was illegitimate.Maduro calls Guaido a puppet of the US seeking to oust him in a coup.He broke off diplomatic relations with Colombia after the February aid effort, accusing it of allowing its territory to be used as a staging ground to attack Venezuela.Without mentioning Colombia, El Aissami said other borders would remain closed “until the positions of hostility and aggression are ceased.”Meanwhile Brazil’s foreign minister yesterday described the arrest of a Venezuelan senior opposition leader as an “act of desperation” by the regime of President Nicolas Maduro.Venezuelan intelligence agents on Wednesday arrested Edgar Zambrano, the deputy to opposition leader Juan Guaido.The move was the latest action against lawmakers who joined a failed uprising organised by Guaido against President Maduro last month.“We are very concerned...by the (Venezuelan) regime’s repression of the democratic opposition, which is no longer the opposition but is a legitimate government,” Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo told reporters in Warsaw alongside his Polish counterpart.“It’s an act of desperation by the regime which sees itself as increasingly stuck, without almost any backing,” he added after talks with Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz.The regime “thus shows that it can’t be party to a dialogue with the democratic forces.”Earlier the US imposed sanctions on two shipping companies and two tankers involved in trade with Venezuela, the US Treasury Department said.The two companies are based in Marshall Islands and Liberia, and both tankers have Panama flags, the Treasury said in a statement on its website yesterday.