THE Venezuela Solidarity Campaign (VSC) in Britain has expressed outrage after Latin American governments issued a statement rejecting the legitimacy of President Nicolas Maduro.

The so-called “Lima Group” of 12 Latin American governments plus Canada made the controversial comments ahead of Mr Maduro’s inauguration tomorrow, even announcing economic sanctions.

The VSC warned that the bloc’s stance “represents the region’s extreme right wing” and said that Brazil’s Bolsonaro administration “is now playing a central role” in trying to “eradicate all forms of progressive politics in the region by hook or by crook.”

VSC secretary Dr Francisco Dominguez said the group’s statement was “a gross interference in the internal affairs of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Maduro was re-elected as Venezula’s president last year with 68 per cent of the vote. The Lima Group has demanded that Maduro resign rather than begin his second term.

However, Mexico’s new left-wing leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador refused to support the Lima Group statement.

Instead, Mexico’s Minister for Latin American and the Caribbean affairs, Maximiliano Reyes, has advocated peaceful dialogue and diplomacy towards Venezuela. 

Mr Dominguez said the Lima Group statement was “abjectly in line with the US aim of ‘regime change,’ a key objective of US foreign policy towards Bolivarian Venezuela since 1999 now massively intensified under Donald Trump and ex-CIA director, Mike Pompeo, current US State Secretary.”

He described the Lima Group’s stance as “probably one of the most shameful acts of abject political servility to uncle sam committed by the region’s oligarchies.”