Secretary of State Pompeo says uniting Venezuelan opposition ‘devilishly difficult’.

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, accompanied by Colombian Vice President Marta Lucía Ramírez, visits a center for displaced Venezuelans in Cúcuta, Colombia, on April 14, 2019. (Luisa Gonzalez/Reuters)
▼ Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered a candid assessment of Venezuela’s opposition during a closed-door meeting in New York last week, saying that the opponents of President Nicolás Maduro are highly fractious and that U.S. efforts to keep them together have been more difficult than is publicly known.
“Our conundrum, which is to keep the opposition united, has proven devilishly difficult,” Pompeo said in an audio recording obtained by The Washington Post. “The moment Maduro leaves, everybody’s going to raise their hands and [say], ‘Take me, I’m the next president of Venezuela.’ It would be forty-plus people who believe they’re the rightful heir to Maduro.”
The remarks provide a rare window into the challenges the Trump administration faces as the momentum to oust Maduro stalls and some of the countries that initially backed the opposition explore alternative diplomatic pathsto resolve the crisis.
Pompeo said he was confident Maduro would eventually be forced out, but “I couldn’t tell you the timing.”
He said the difficulty of uniting the opposition has not only played out in “public for these last months, but since the day I became CIA director, this was something that was at the center of what President Trump was trying to do.”
“We were trying to support various religious . . . institutions to get the opposition to come together,” he said.
He expressed regret that during a failed April 30 bid to incite a military  uprising, competing interests among Maduro’s enemies and rivals prevented the socialist dictator’s swift exit.
“You should know, [Maduro] is mostly surrounded by Cubans,” Pompeo said. “He doesn’t trust Venezuelans a lick. I don’t blame him. He shouldn’t. They were all plotting against him. Sadly, they were all plotting for themselves.”
The remarks represent a sharp departure from the Trump administration’s official line touting the unity and strength of the opposition led by Juan Guaidó, the National Assembly leader recognized by some 60 countries asinterim president.
“This is the first senior official I’ve heard be so publicly candid about the opposition’s weakness and how it may make bringing democracy back to Venezuela so much harder,” said Shannon O’Neil, a Venezuela expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“It is a sobering but accurate view,” she added. “They remain divided over how to take on the Maduro regime — whether or not to enter into dialogue, whether or not to engage with the military, whether or not to run a presidential candidate or boycott elections. They don’t even retweet each other.”
The leaked audio comes from a surprisingly frank meeting Pompeo held with Jewish leaders last week in which he also delivered a blunt  assessmentof the Trump administration’s long-awaited Middle East peace plan.
During the private meeting, Pompeo expressed hesitation about answering particularly sensitive questions, saying “someone’s probably got a tape recorder on, so I won’t say.”
That prompted a leader of the gathering to say, “I want to emphasize that this meeting is off the record.” (▪ ▪ ▪)

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