Mexican officials want answers about a reported plane crash in Venezuela earlier this week in a location linked to drug smuggling, and they say President Nicolas Maduro’s government hasn’t been forthcoming.
The mystery threatens to damage relations between the two governments which have clashed repeatedly over the past decade,
the Los Angeles Times reported.
On Tuesday, a Venezuelan military officer posted a photograph of the charred remains of the aircraft, which he said had been “detected and intercepted” Monday by the military.
He added that the plane had been “immobilized” in Apure, a state bordering Colombia where planes frequently take off carrying cocaine to Central America, before it is smuggled into the United States by Mexican cartels.
Mexican Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong told reporters Wednesday that his government lacked “much information” about what happened — in particular, whether Mexican nationals were involved in the crash.
Chong told reporters that Venezuelan officials reported setting fire to the plane after it landed, the Times Reported.
The Mexican newspaper El Universal reported that the aircraft took off from an airport in Queretaro, Mexico, on Monday.
Meanwhile, Maduro delivered a nationally televised speech Wednesday in which he boasted of his government’s aggressive efforts to bring down planes smuggling narcotics.
Despite Maduro’s claims that Venezuela has been fighting drug traffickers, U.S. officials have long suspected that Caracas has facilitated FARC’s smuggling operations.
The airplane mystery threatens to undercut efforts to improve Mexican-Venezuelan relations. The two nations severed diplomatic ties in 2005 after then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez derided Mexican President Vicente Fox as a U.S. “puppy dog.”
Diplomatic ties were reestablished two years later. Earlier this year, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto attended Chavez’s funeral in Caracas.
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