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Guaido unexpectedly arrived in Colombia on the eve of the summit
organized by the government of leftist President Gustavo Petro with
the aim of restarting stalled negotiations between Venezuela’s
government and opposition politicians in Mexico.
He boarded a plane in Colombia's capital Bogota on Monday, just
hours after he saying on Twitter that he had crossed into Colombia
on foot.
"After 70 hours or more of travel I'm still very worried about my
family and team," Guaido told journalists after arriving in Miami,
referring to threats they had received.
His visit to Colombia wasn't warmly welcomed by some officials, and
the country's Foreign Minister Alvaro Leyva said Guaido had entered
the Andean country inappropriately.
"Migration Colombia took Juan Guaido, a Venezuelan national who
arrived irregularly in Bogota, to El Dorado airport with the aim of
ensuring his departure to the United States on a commercial
airline," Colombia's foreign ministry said late on Monday, adding
Guaido had bought his own ticket.
Guaido had hoped to see members of international delegations
organized by the government of Colombia's leftist President Gustavo
Petro.
He urged countries participating in the Bogota summit on Tuesday to
speak for Venezuelans in exile, being effectively "the voice Maduro
wanted to take from me," he said.
The aim of the conference, to be attended by representatives of 19
countries and the European Union, is to help restart stalled talks
in Mexico between the government of Venezuela's President Nicolas
Maduro and opposition politicians.
Guaido, a 39-year-old industrial engineer, headed an interim
government beginning in January 2019, before being replaced as head
of the opposition legislature at the end of 2022.
Guaido's political party, Popular Will, rejected his treatment by
Colombia's government, it said in a statement.
(Reporting by Oliver Griffin, Deisy Buitrago, Mayela Armas y Vivian
Sequera, Writing by Natalia Siniawski; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
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