Venezuela Talks Break Down, Opposition Claims

Venezuela's opposition said Wednesday the government has abandoned Vatican-brokered talks, potentially ending a short-lived political truce in the deeply polarized nation.

Government officials failed to attend a routine meeting Tuesday night. Opposition negotiators said the government was protesting the opposition's decision to raise the issue in congress of the two in-laws of President Nicolá s Maduro, who were convicted in New York last week of drug trafficking.

Mr. Maduro and his officials haven't commented on the status of the talks. The Information Ministry didn't respond to request for comment.

Since their start last month, the talks have led to the release of several jailed opposition activists and vague agreements on future elections but have failed to make any real progress toward solving the country's deep political and economic crisis. The lack of progress has caused growing frustration among many opposition leaders, who had halted large street protests and legal actions against Mr. Maduro to join the talks.

"Maduro got up from the table of the supposed dialogue!" opposition leader and former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles said in a Twitter posting Wednesday. "They [the government] don't want to fulfill any commitments."

During the talks, the opposition and the government have agreed to hold parliamentary elections in the contested state of Amazonas, which could give Mr. Maduro's opponents a supermajority in congress to enact sweeping new laws and fire ministers. It is unclear whether the elections will take place if the talks don't resume.

Some of the more hard-line opponents of Mr. Maduro already have called the opposition alliance, the Democratic Unity Roundtable, to resume street protests that were attracting hundreds of thousands of people last month, putting the government on the defensive.

"It was a mistake to abandon the street, but we can still mend our ways," opposition lawmaker Juan Andres Mejia said in a Twitter posting Wednesday.

Mr. Mejia has also called on the opposition-controlled congress to resume legal procedures against Mr. Maduro for supposedly abandoning his basic governing responsibilities.

The opposition alliance is expected to make a formal announcement Wednesday night on whether it will be prepared to resume the talks.

The halting of the talks came during the visit to Caracas of Thomas Shannon, the head of political section at the U.S. Department of State and a prominent proponent of the dialogue. Mr. Shannon will meet with both the opposition and Mr. Maduro's officials this week, according to the opposition leaders.

Write to Anatoly Kurmanaev at Anatoly.kurmanaev@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 23, 2016 20:05 ET (01:05 GMT)

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