MONTEVIDEO, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- Uruguay and Mexico on Wednesday unveiled a four-step proposal to bring Venezuela's disputing parties closer to a negotiated solution to the political crisis.
The "Montevideo Mechanism" was announced by Uruguayan Foreign Minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa and his Mexican counterpart Marcelo Ebrard at a press conference here one day before Montevideo is set to host an international meeting on Venezuela.
The first step calls for immediate dialogue to create conditions for direct contact between Venezuela's ruling socialist party and President Nicolas Maduro on the one hand and the right-wing opposition led by self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido on the other, Novoa said.
That would be followed by a negotiation phase, a commitments phase, and a finally implementation phase, according to Novoa.
The proposal did not insist on holding snap presidential elections as the opposition had been demanding.
"If we ask for elections at such a moment, we are imposing conditions that hinder dialogue," said Novoa.
Uruguay and Mexico have also proposed three prominent regional figures to advance the mechanism: ex-president of the Inter-American Development Bank Enrique Iglesias, former Mexican foreign affairs secretary and former judge of the International Court of Justice Bernardo Sepulveda, and Ibero-American Secretary General Rebeca Grynspan, a Costa Rican economist and former United Nations under-secretary-general.
