The president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Jorge Rodriguez, gestures while speaking during a press conference with international media correspondents at the National Assembly, in Caracas, on March 18, 2022. (Photo by Federico PARRA / AFP) (Photo by FEDERICO PARRA/ AFP via Getty Images)
(CNN Spanish) --
Jorge Rodríguez, president of the National Assembly of Venezuela and head of the government delegation for negotiations in Mexico with the opposition, ruled out this Friday meeting with opposition leader Juan Guaidó, whom he called "drug trafficker."
Rodríguez, one of the most influential politicians in the government of the questioned president Nicolás Maduro, said verbatim: “We are not going to meet with Juan Guaidó.
We do not meet with drug traffickers.
We put drug traffickers in jail."
Three days earlier, Rodríguez had reported that he would request a meeting with lawyer Gerardo Blyde, who heads the delegation of the opposition unitary platform at the negotiating table.
The parliamentarian made these comments at a press conference in which he denounced the existence of links between Guaidó and the Voluntad Popular party with the Italian-Venezuelan Biaggio Garófalo, detained in Colombia on drug trafficking charges.
CNN tried to contact Guaidó's team to get their reaction to Rodríguez's remarks, but so far has not received a response.
However, from his Twitter account, hours after the press conference, the opposition leader seemed to respond.
"Reward of international justice for Maduro, indicated by the CPI, nephews of the dictator arrested, officials of the regime denounced from the PSUV," he wrote.
"Despite more propaganda from the dictatorship, Venezuelans and the world know that the regime supports and is linked to drug trafficking," he added.
CNN is also trying to contact Voluntad Popular for their reaction.
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On the other hand, Rodríguez stressed that the memorandum of understanding signed between the opposition and the Government in Mexico on August 13 of last year "became a binding agreement for the National Assembly and for the Republic" and that this will not change before the announcement that the dialogue will be reformatted.
For his part, Guaidó had reacted to the intentions of meeting with Blyde by saying that "the unitary platform decides and appoints its delegation."
In addition, he added that just as "the dictatorship used Alex Saab to get up and gave a chair to a criminal who traded with the hunger of Venezuelans, they can give the chair to any criminal they want."
The negotiation process that began in Mexico in September with the signing of a memorandum of understanding has been on pause and has not been restored since mid-October, when Colombian businessman Alex Saab, close to Maduro, was extradited to the United States from Cape Green.