Alex Saab Kidnapping Meant to Stop Food Purchases: Maduro

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro denounced Thursday that the kidnapping of diplomat Alex Saab is due to attempts to prevent the country from importing food and weaken the Local Supply and Production Committee (CLAP).

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"They kidnapped Alex Saab and have done everything possible to destroy the CLAP, which is the food of the people, but thanks to that, today all food is produced in Venezuela," denounced the Venezuelan head of state.

The Venezuelan president asserted that the food assistance program they mean to destroy is a mechanism to palliate the illegal sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union against the country.

"The CLAPs serve more than 7 million Venezuelan families (...) we will continue insisting on dialogue, work and union in Latin America and the Caribbean", reiterated the Venezuelan president.

Last September 14, the head of the Venezuelan Government's dialogue delegation, Jorge Rodríguez, announced the incorporation of diplomat Saab in the dialogue process taking place in Mexico with the opposition. 

"We communicate the decision to incorporate diplomat Alex Saab as a full member of this delegation, as well as he is also incorporated as a full delegate before the Social Table that was approved in the partial agreement signed in Mexico," announced Rodríguez.

Rodríguez stated that Saab fulfills all the requirements to participate in the dialogue process and also recalled his illegal detention in Cape Verde, "this punishment was perpetrated because he was fulfilling the functions we are talking about in the Dialogue Table," he added.

"We consider that Alex Saab is qualified and has the conditions to be part as a full member of the dialogue delegation," detailed the also president of the National Assembly.