(Bloomberg) -- Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela is not included on a list of prospective invitees to the BRICS bloc of emerging market countries that has circulated among the group’s members at the United Nations this week, according to three Brazilian officials familiar with the situation.
Maduro has chased a BRICS invite as the group plans another expansion after adding four members to its core roster of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in January, in hopes of using it to bolster Venezuela’s legitimacy globally.
Russia, which will host the bloc’s annual summit next month, presented a preliminary list of names to its fellow members during the UN General Assembly in New York as it seeks consensus around which countries to invite, according to the officials, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
A Russian official close to the Kremlin declined to comment specifically on Venezuela but said Vladimir Putin’s government cannot formally invite any nation to the group before there is agreement among all current members. Neither Russia’s foreign ministry nor a spokesperson for Putin responded to comment requests.
Venezuela’s information ministry didn’t immediately respond to a written request for comment.
The countries that ultimately receive invites would join the group as partner nations rather than full members, another Russian official familiar with the plans said. That differs from the previous expansion, in which the BRICS countries added Iran, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt to their ranks.
Venezuela is among more than 30 countries that applied to join the new category, and Maduro has publicly discussed his desire to enter the group he sees as a counterweight to the US and other Western nations that have hammered him with sanctions in recent years.
But Brazil has grown increasingly uncomfortable with a potential invite in the wake of Venezuela’s disputed July election, which has frayed relations between Maduro and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a longtime ally.
Officials from the BRICS nations are meeting Thursday in New York to continue discussions ahead of the October summit in Kazan. The Brazilian officials cautioned that the expansion talks have so far taken place solely among diplomats and foreign affairs ministers, and that Putin — who maintains close ties to Maduro — could still decide to invite Venezuela.
Doing so, however, would create a massive potential headache for Lula, who has refused to recognize Maduro’s self-declared victory and criticized the socialist regime over the wave of repression it has unleashed against political opponents.
At the same time, he has avoided recognizing the opposition’s claims to victory while seeking to keep diplomatic relations between Caracas and Brasilia from fully breaking.
Brazil is set to take over the rotating presidency of BRICS from Russia, and adding Venezuela would likely intensify the global scrutiny Lula is facing over his strategy toward Maduro as the crisis continues to deepen.
Brazil has already vetoed an invite to Nicaragua, according to the Brazilian officials. Diplomatic relations between the two nations broke off in August amid a dispute between Lula and President Daniel Ortega, another traditional leftist ally.
Nicaragua is also absent from the list circulating in New York, according to the officials.
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