The “International Conference on the Political Process in Venezuela,” organized by Colombian radical leftist President Gustavo Petro, concluded on Tuesday with no results beyond a statement with recommendations made by participating countries for both Venezuela’s socialist regime and the establishment “opposition.”

Neither representatives from the Maduro regime nor the Venezuelan establishment “opposition” ended up participating in Petro’s conference. The only member of either side who attempted to attend, former Venezuelan President Juan Guaidó, was deported.

Parties to the Colombia talks included representatives from Germany, Italy, Canada, Chile, South Africa, and Turkey, among others.

Venezuelan opposition members did meet with Colombian officials this weekend, prior to the summit, and Maduro officials also maintained communication separately with the Petro administration.

The Maduro regime “took note” of the recommendations issued, with no plan to take action in response to them.

The only major result of the conference was the dramatic exile of Venezuela’s former President Juan Guaidó to the United States shortly before the start of the conference. Guaidó—who was not invited to the conference despite years at the helm of the opposition—crossed into Colombia by land since Nicolas Maduro placed him on a no-fly list and was hastily deported on the grounds that he had crossed into the country illegally.

The joint statement signed by parties to the summit after it transpired asserted that it presented both sides with “identified common positions” among the participants toward holding “free” and “transparent” elections in Venezuela and the lifting of sanctions on the Maduro regime.

Additionally, the statement recommended the return of negotiations between both sides, which remain suspended since November, and the implementation of a trust fund for social investment in Venezuela.

Petro invited representatives of 20 countries to Colombia on Tuesday to hold an international conference on Venezuela. The Colombian president had previously said that the conference’s main objective was to lift international human rights sanctions on Venezuela’s socialist regime led by dictator Nicolás Maduro.

“In our countries, and in the Venezuelan case, I believe that we have to walk on two tracks at the same time,” Petro said during the conference. “To establish the schedule, yes, of the elections and their guarantees. That the Venezuelan people can decide freely and sovereignly what they want, without pressure. Also the other track of the lifting of sanctions.”

Petro also pointed out that he asked the Maduro regime to return Venezuela to the Organization of American States (OAS) and its Inter-American Human Rights System (IACHR), something that the Colombian president described would be a “great achievement” if successful.

Venezuela, under the rule of Hugo Chávez, left the IACHR in September 2012 and formalized its departure one year later. Under Nicolás Maduro, the regime withdrew from the Organization of American States as a whole in 2017, as the South American country underwent an intense period of protests during the collapse of its socialist system. The departure of Venezuela from the OAS was formalized in 2020.

The Maduro regime responded to the Colombia conference by “taking note” of it through an official Foreign Ministry statement. On Monday, prior to the start of the conference, the Foreign Ministry issued a list of demands that the United States and other countries must comply with before the Venezuelan socialist regime returns to the negotiating table to discuss terms for a “free and fair” election.

The demands included lifting all human rights sanctions imposed on the Maduro regime, control over all Venezuelan government foreign assets, and the release of Colombian businessman Alex Saab, Maduro’s financial brain, who is currently on trial in the United States on charges of money laundering.

The Maduro regime’s statement read:

Venezuela reiterates the imperative need for the lifting of each and every one of the unilateral coercive measures, illegal and harmful to international law, which constitute an aggression against the entire Venezuelan population and hinder the development, economic and social life of the country. In this sense, it demands the return of the assets belonging to the Venezuelan State illegally retained by foreign countries and financial institutions.

The Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela reiterates that the way forward in the political dialogue is through the full compliance with the commitment reached at the Negotiating Table in Mexico for the creation of a Social Fund. That, with the release of resources belonging to the Venezuelan people, contemplates investments in health, education, public services and risk mitigation, as well as the immediate release of the Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab, unjustly detained in the United States of America.

U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer, who led the United States’ delegation at Petro’s conference, said that the United States would grant the Maduro regime sanctions relief if “free and fair” elections take place in Venezuela.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who was present at the conference, stated on Tuesday that the European Union is willing to review the sanctions if “democratic normalization” advances in Venezuela and there are “free, transparent and inclusive elections.”

“I am sure that the sanctions that are of concern are not the personal sanctions of the leaders of the regime but the economic sanctions that affect Venezuelans,” Borrell said, continuing:

The European Union has not taken any economic sanctions that affect the living conditions of Venezuelans. And of course, in any negotiation process there is a do-ut-des — one party does and the other responds — and action and reaction have to be synchronized in time, and the closer together the better.

“It is obvious that a process of democratic normalization will have to be accompanied by a gradual lifting of sanctions,” he continued. “It is all a question of when and how.”

The most significant—albeit tangential—result of the conference was the exile of Venezuela’s former president Juan Guaidó to the United States.

Guaidó, who was Venezuela’s legitimate president between January 2019 and December 2022, was forced to board a plane out of Colombia to Miami, Florida, after arriving in the country by land on Monday, seeking to hold meetings with the Venezuelan diaspora in the country and with some of the international delegations participating in the conference.

The former interim president had not been invited to participate in Petro’s Venezuela conference.

Leopoldo López—leader of Venezuela’s socialist Popular Will party, of which Guaidó was a member before his presidency, and currently in exile in Spain—said during an interview with Colombia’s Caracol Radio on Tuesday that Colombia’s treatment of Guaidó was “totally unacceptable and very regrettable.” López claimed Guaidó had been blackmailed to leave for the United States with threats against the safety of his wife, Fabiana Rosales, and his two young daughters during his stay in Colombia.

“Guaidó was subjected to pressure and blackmail, where his wife Fabiana [Rosales], his two daughters, who are 4 and 1 year old, were put at the center of this pressure,” López said, “and of course, seeing his family at risk, being threatened, being told from Colombia that the only way to protect them was to leave the country, he had to make the decision to go to the United States.”

“The position of the Colombian government – of not really wanting to walk the path towards a solution, but to accompany the interests of the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro, who has been pressuring for this to materialize – is laid bare,” López continued.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.