Venezuela

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on May 20 proposed early elections for the National Assembly, which is headed by opposition leader Juan Guaido and is the sole body recognized as democratically legitimate by most Western nations.

Turkey opposes foreign interventions including coup attempt in Venezuela, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on May 20.         

Venezuelan authorities are ready to start negotiations with U.S. counterparts to discuss bilateral relations. This is what the Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza told Telesur TV.

Lawmakers entered congress on May 15, a day after opposition leader Juan Guaido accused Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro's government of trying to "gag" the legislature after it was blocked by security forces.

Venezuela has proposed Turkey as a "protecting power" for its embassy in Washington, its ambassador to the UN said on May 15.      

Pro-Romania national leader Victor Ponta, a candidate in the elections to the European Parliament, tells AGERPRES in an interview that replacing Liviu Dragnea as speaker of the Chamber of Deputies is a priority for the party he leads. "A priority is replacing Mr Dragnea from the Chamber of Deputies (...) Actually, Achilles' heel is there if you want to be successful.

A second airplane from China carrying medical supplies including medicine arrived in Venezuela on May 13 as part of a "humanitarian technical" cooperation agreement between President Nicolas Maduro's government and the Asian powerhouse.

The deputy to Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido was jailed on May 10 at a military prison in Caracas following his dramatic arrest, while President Nicolas Maduro accused his sacked intelligence chief of being a CIA "mole" and the architect of a failed military uprising 10 days ago.

U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin discussed the situation in Venezuela during wide-ranging telephone talks on May 3, the White House said.

SYRIZA keeps looking for ways to transfer its political dispute with New Democracy abroad. One wonders whether the prime minister and his aides have so little faith in their own positions that they seek confirmation elsewhere, or whether the long-term distortion of reality has evolved from a political trick into a disease, where the afflicted see only what they want to see.