Chinese military personnel arrived in Venezuela in order to help distribute Chinese humanitarian aid after Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami said that Caracas had received 65 tonnes of medicines from China.
The vice president also highlighted the “important and strategic level” of the partnership between Caracas and Beijing.
US sanctions have cut off Venezuela’s access to vital medical supplies, including an 18-million-euro shipment of medicines and vaccines, Venezuela’s Health Minister Carlos Alvarado said on Tuesday.
The government has already agreed to purchase the supplies but is unable to pay for them due to Washington’s “coercive unilateral” sanctions, Alvarado explained to state-run VTV.
Xinhua news reported that the purchase included two million euros’ worth of vaccines acquired through international public health agency the Pan American Health Organization, which the government has not been able to pay for because US sanctions have blocked banking transactions, he said.
Other goods have blocked too. “We have many other things that are already negotiated and bought, but the money is blocked and that’s why we can’t make the payment,” said Alvarado.
Venezuela has been struggling since 2014, after former US President Barack Obama issued an executive order to label the country “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security, Alvarado recalled.
The situation has been worsening over these years, the minister said, adding that “2017 was the most terrible, most critical period because it was increasingly difficult to buy medicine and to buy vaccines.”
As a result, “diseases that had been brought under control in the country, like measles and diphtheria,” began to reemerge, he said.
Beijing has meanwhile denied reports that China sent military personnel in order to help Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as “fiction”.
“I don’t know where do you get this information. I can definitely say it is fiction,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, said at a media briefing. According to the diplomat, Beijing believes the issue should be solved in accordance through dialogue.
“The Chinese government is against interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela and believes that the authorities and the opposition of this country should work out a draft political settlement through dialogue,” Gen Shuang noted.
