Press. voanews.com.
U.S. Secretary
of State Rex Tillerson begins a six-day trip Thursday through Latin America in
which he's expected to rally the region's governments in pressing democratic
reforms in crisis-ridden Venezuela. Tillerson's travels will take him to
Mexico, Argentina, Peru and Colombia, with a final stop in Jamaica on February
7. The United States will use "all its political, diplomatic and economic
tools to address the situation in Venezuela," a senior State Department
official said at a briefing this week on the trip.
Venezuela is in
its fifth year of a worsening political and economic crisis. In January, the
U.S. Treasury added four current or former Venezuelan senior military officials
to its sanctions list, accusing them of corruption and repression that have
contributed to critical shortages of food and medicine and the erosion of human
rights. The European Union also has imposed sanctions, and the Organization of
American States' secretary general, Luis Almagro, has championed democratic
reforms for Venezuela.
President
Nicolas Maduro, who accuses the United States of leading an international
effort to topple his socialist administration, announced in January that he
would seek a second six-year term and called for an election by April 30. Tillerson's first stop will be at the
University of Texas at Austin, where he'll speak on the Trump administration's
policy priorities in the Western Hemisphere.
Later Thursday,
Tillerson heads to Mexico City to meet with Mexican President Enrique Pena
Nieto and other senior officials. The United States and Mexico have had tense
relations over President Donald Trump's proposals to curb illegal immigration
and have Mexico pay for a reinforced border wall. This week, the United States,
Mexico and Canada completed a sixth round of talks on renegotiating the NAFTA
trade deal, which Trump often alleges has cost American jobs.
In Colombia,
Tillerson plans to meet with officials including President Juan Manuel Santos,
a fierce critic of the Maduro administration. They are expected to discuss not
only Venezuela, but also "the surge in coca cultivation and cocaine
production, economic issues and the growing refugee population" from neighboring
Venezuela, the State Department said in a statement.
At the Monday
briefing on Tillerson's trip, a State Department official said "the
pressure campaign is working" to aid Venezuela. The Trump administration's objective, the
representative said, "is to help the Venezuelan people to deal with this
economic crisis, but also to restore the democratic order so that they can be
in charge of their future again."