The wing candidate US presidential candidate for the Democratic Party Martin O'Malley said, to reach the White House will seek more cooperation with Latin America, but also impose more sanctions on Venezuela by the jailing of opponents. EFE
"I think we need to revitalize our relations in the Americas. It tend as a nation, perhaps because our European orientation, to look to the East and the West and perhaps not enough to the north and south, "he said in a telephone interview with Efe O'Malley, third in the Democratic contest after Senator Bernie Sanders and the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
For O'Malley, governor of Maryland from 2007 to 2015, opening to Latin America beginning with Cuba, a country with which the US restored diplomatic relations on July 20 by reopening embassies in Havana and Washington after more than half a century historical enmity.
"I think that a future more committed and more collaborative US foreign policy begins to repair, improve and strengthen relations in our own hemisphere, and our foreign relations with Cuba in the last 50 years have been a source of tremendous controversy," he said.
"I think the normalization of relations, the embargo is a very positive step forward and support," said O'Malley.
With polls against O'Malley has tried to differentiate itself from its rivals for the Democratic nomination for progressive immigration proposals and a foreign policy focused on Latin America and Central America, a region which also calls for more solidarity in the fight against drug trafficking .
During the interview, he recalled a trip he took in 2013 in El Salvador, where he met with then President Mauricio Funes and twenty mayors, according to O'Malley, complained that the business of its cities paid less taxes State extortion to drug traffickers.
"We have to make ourselves heard and do a better job in reducing the threat that plagues countries in our own hemisphere and that degenerates in failed narco" said O'Malley, former mayor of Baltimore (Maryland) and dubbed "Governor of rock and roll" by the band "O'Malley's March" led since 1988.
O'Malley proved harder with Venezuela, which US President Barack Obama, considered a "threat" to US national security in a decree signed last March, in which Washington sanctioned a group of Venezuelan officials and which served to increase tension between the two nations.
"I think Venezuela has decisions to make. Can interact as a responsible nation in this hemisphere with respect for human rights abuses or can continue taking decisions as mayors lock "she defended O'Malley.
The Democrat was referring to the imprisonment of political opponents in Venezuela different, as Leopoldo López, sentenced to nearly 14 years in prison for violence in the protests of 2014 and the former mayors Antonio Ledezma and Daniel Ceballos, the two defendants under house arrest crimes against the government.
"Venezuela has a decision to make and I think the sanctions that the President has implemented sanctions are correct and should continue until Venezuela ceases to detain political opponents," said O'Malley, who when asked about it said yes impose more sanctions against the Caribbean country.
Moreover, O'Malley was skeptical with the new strategy in Syria by President Barack Obama, who has decided to send a small number of troops (50 members of the special forces) to advise opponents of the regime of Bashar al-Assad in the fight against the Islamic State (EI).
"I think one of the lessons we should remember is that in the last 15 years, deploying US troops on the ground in the Middle East, sometimes had the opposite effect than we would like," said O'Malley which he warned of terrorist propaganda power of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.
In his view, the deployment of troops could become a "great recruiting tool" for these groups, already used for this purpose the prison of Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), created by President George W. Bush in 2002 to imprison suspected terrorists and whose closure Obama promised.
"I think the best soldiers that should be at the front are those countries that have the most to lose by the expansion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria," defended O'Malley.
Since its local political echelon, O'Malley backed Clinton when he ran for the White House in 2008, but now emerges as the "only candidate who represents a new generation of leadership" and, with his youth, seeking to unseat in new television debates to the two candidates that make shade.
The latest polls from the web Real Clear Politics, put Clinton in the lead with 54.8% support nationally over Sanders (32.5%) and O'Malley (1.8%), He has been preparing for this challenge for years and is convinced that the game is not over until the referee whistles the end.