Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has accepted an invitation to head Petrocaribe’s newly formed political council, Venezuelan foreign minister Nicolás Maduro announced on Saturday. Minister Maduro said that in his new post, Zelaya would “oversee strengthening of political independence and the defense of ‘popular democracy‘ in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Petrocaribe, a Venezuelan state initiative created in 2005, gives preferential oil prices to 18 Caribbean and Central American nations. The announcement came at a governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) meeting in Caracas, to which Zelaya had traveled from the Dominican Republic (where he is living under exile) to attend.
Zelaya, who was overthrown in a June 28, 2009 coup has been living in self-imposed exile since January 27, 2010, when Porfirio Lobo was sworn in as president.
