13 September 2018
President Maduro denounced that Washington and the military faction are behind his attempted assassination and coup
By TELESUR
The Venezuelan government says there is no doubt that Washington is planning to oust President Nicolas Maduro after a report published by the New York Times Saturday stated that United States officials and a small group within the Venezuelan military met to plot his ouster over the course of the last year.
Maduro said Monday that there is an "international, global defamation campaign, which seeks to justify the unconstitutional coup" led by forces inside and outside of Venezuela. On August 4, during the Bolivarian National Armed Guard 81st anniversary celebrations, two drones packed with C4 explosives were detonated while Maduro was delivering a speech, injuring seven military personnel.
"We have passed all the tests and we have shown that we are invincible, invulnerable," the head of state said while reiterating that in Venezuela there is no humanitarian crisis but "difficulties" due to the economic war being waged against the country. Maduro's comments were echoed by the country's Minister of Communication and Information, Jorge Rodriguez, in a televised address Monday.
A New York Times article published Saturday reported that members of the Venezuelan military met with U.S. officials to concoct a coup against Maduro over the course of the last year. There was no mention of the August 4 drone attack on the president and his ministers, which Rodriguez says is an attempt by the international media to "minimize" or play down the assassination attempt against the country's head of state. "Some are even saying that the failed assassination attempt on the president was staged," Rodriguez said as he condemned international reporting on the attempt.
So far some 2,780 Venezuelans have returned from Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia in the ‘Return to the Homeland Plan’ after migrating for economic reasons. The government is flying or busing Venezuelans back to their country and assisting them to re-establish there lives in the country.
Countering the current media narrative, Venezuelan officials have shown the country to be home to 5.6 million Colombians, 500,000 Peruvians, 500,000 Ecuadorians, 400,000 Portuguese, 200,000 Italians, 250,000 Spanish, 500,000 Chinese and about 1 million people from the "Arab world. "Venezuela knows what migration is because we receive them,” Maduro said.
On the other way, the defense ministers of Venezuela and Brazil held a meeting Tuesday to address issues of bilateral interest. Venezuelan Defense Minister Padrino Lopez, rejected intervention attempts into Venezuela and the region and urged Brazil to do the same.
After Venezuelan Defense Minister of Venezuela Vladimir Padrino Lopez met with his Brazilian counterpart Joaquin Silva, the two delivered a press conference in which Lopez warned that "an intervention into Venezuela is an intervention for the entire region, which would be very dangerous for everyone."
The Venezuelan minister indicated that he proposed to his counterpart going to instances that they have shared as peoples within the framework of the Union of South American Nations ( Unasur ), "where Brazil itself promoted the South American defense consensus and preserving the region as an area of peace.”
For his part, the Brazilian minister explained that the meetings held with the Armed Forces are to raise the level of work meetings between both nations. "We are united not only by our borders but by the friendship and solidarity of our peoples," said Silva.
