VENEZUELAN Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza condemned the European Union’s “shameful” sanctioning of seven top officials yesterday, saying it was proof of Brussels’s “subordination” to Washington. 

Mr Arreaza said Venezuela rejected the measures imposed “in an illegal and unilateral manner,” which “violate the fundamental precepts of the UN Charter and are intended to exercise a gross interference in the internal affairs of our country.”

He argued that the sanctions indicated an “erratic and interventionist policy towards our country” which recalled the “colonialist manoeuvres of ancient empires, expelled from our America 200 years ago by the courage and freedom-loving will of our peoples.”