Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday suggested Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro could call a new election involving international observers as a potential solution for the political crisis in the country.
Lula also said a "coalition government" could be another possible solution for Venezuela after the contested presidential election on July 28, which both Maduro and the opposition claim to have won.
"If (Maduro) has common sense, he could put it to the people, perhaps calling new elections with a nonpartisan electoral committee," Lula said in a radio interview.
The Brazilian president said he still does not recognize Maduro as the winner of the vote and that his government must publish voting tallies that have not been released.
"Maduro knows he owes Brazil and the world an explanation," Lula said.
Brazil has sought, along with its other neighbor Colombia, to find a solution to the crisis in Venezuela. Lula and his Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro spoke by phone on Wednesday but no details were released of the conversation.
Lula's top foreign policy advisor Celso Amorim, speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Brazil had not formally proposed a new election in Venezuela.
"Let's find a solution that is democratic, electoral and peaceful in Venezuela," Amorim said.
Conservative senators at the hearing criticized the Lula administration for favoring Maduro with its soft stance, and asked what Brazil was doing for jailed opposition leaders.
Amorim said Brazil offered to send a plane to pick up six Maduro opponents seeking asylum in the Argentine embassy, now under a Brazilian flag since Venezuela broke ties with Argentina.
Venezuela's electoral authority proclaimed Maduro the winner of the July election with 51% of the vote, although it has yet to divulge the voting tallies.
The opposition says its own detailed tally shows Gonzalez likely received 67% of the vote, winning by a margin of nearly 4 million votes, and has uploaded to a website scanned copies of local vote tallies.
More than two weeks after Maduro claimed reelection victory, the United States and other Western countries are showing little sign of swift, tough action over what many of them have condemned as voting fraud.
Representatives of Venezuela's government and opposition have previously ruled out the idea of new elections.
