Baku-APA. A trio of foreign mediators -- ex-leaders of Spain, Panama and the Dominican Republic -- said in Caracas on Thursday they are seeking "national dialogue" in Venezuela to pull the country back from the brink of chaos, APA reports quoting AFP.
"I am asking the international community to back this goal of national dialogue and we are going to fix an agenda within a reasonable period," the team's leader, former Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, told a news conference.
He spoke after the trio met with Venezuela's embattled President Nicolas Maduro and opposition leaders.
The three ex-leaders are Zapatero and the former presidents of Panama and the Dominican Republic, Martin Torrijos and Leonel Fernandez.
They are operating under the aegis of the Union of South American Nations, a body meant to defuse regional crises and promote cooperation between its 12 member states.
Maduro invited the mission to Venezuela last month to participate in a "truth commission" he set up in reaction to a bid by the opposition-led parliament to declare an amnesty for political prisoners.
Venezuela's Supreme Court, stacked with Maduro loyalist judges, shot down the amnesty, which would have freed 75 opposition figures, including an emblematic protest leader, Leopoldo Lopez.
Now, with Venezuela in the grip of an escalating political crisis amid an economic meltdown, the mediators have switched tasks to try to find a way to get Maduro and the opposition to talk with each other.
The endeavor is an uphill one. The opposition is set on ousting Maduro through a recall referendum.
The Venezuelan president has dismissed that push and decreed a state of emergency that he has threatened to ratchet up if "violent" anti-government acts occur.
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