Headlines from the Listin Diario and El Caribe today bemoan a deteriorating diplomatic situation resulting from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’ accusation of a coup attempt being coordinated from Dominican soil. President Hipolito Mejia has repeatedly refuted any such accusations, but the Chavez administration has insisted the allegations are true.
From Spain, Mejia sent instructions to the Foreign Ministry to seek a solution to the crisis. Venezuela has recalled its ambassador and warned of serious consequences. Nonetheless, the Dominican Foreign Ministry has told the local press that they have not received any official notification of the removal of their ambassador, Francisco Belisario Landis, a diplomatic requirement for these situations.
Local members of the Congress have called the steps taken an attempt to blackmail the DR. The conflict has already caused a suspension of oil shipments from Venezuela, a long-established supplier to the Dominican Republic under the preferential terms of the San Jose Agreement. But economist Arturo Martinez Moya, a former manager of the Dominican Petroleum Refinery, said in an interview in the Listin Diario on Sunday that the suspension could be the best thing that could happen to the DR, as it releases it from the obligation of sourcing in Venezuela, an OPEC cartel country. He said the DR is now free to buy fuel at better prices on the world market that supply 70% of world petroleum production.
Today’s papers announce that Vice-President Milagros Ortiz Bosch has demanded that the Venezuelan government use the diplomatic pouch to divulge the names of those Dominican businesses accused of financing the alleged plot. Venezuelan officials have called the attitude taken by Dominican officials “a joke”. El Caribe says that Ortiz Bosch asked that Venezuelan officials stop the “spontaneous pronouncements” and send their complaints in the diplomatic pouch.
Meanwhile, the Dominican government announced yesterday that they would not withdraw their ambassador from Venezuela, in spite of appeals being made to do so. According to the Listin Diario, the Chancellery has reported that normal relations would be re-established “shortly.”