Good afternoon to both of you. Thank you very much for coming. It's a real treat here to have two such esteemed and well-informed individuals on the situation in Venezuela.
Secretary General, I want to go in a slightly different direction, but I want to carry on with what my colleague said. If we look at the economic situation in Venezuela right now, we see that minimum wages have gone up 34 times. We've seen prices that are doubling every 18 to 26 days. We see a devaluation and a change in the currency. We've seen the value-added tax rise from 4% to 16%, and we see now a currency that's linked to a virtual currency that nobody really understands. It's called a petro.
As you can see from all of these things that I've mentioned, the financial stability of the country is not going well today or in the future. I know Professor Cotler has very eloquently outlined all the human rights abuses that are happening there. Let's just take one aspect of Venezuela and look at the financial stability right now.
Right now we know it's not doing well. Under this current regime, under this current scenario, the economy is not going to improve.
I go back to a comment that you made on September 14 in the town of Socotá—I think I'm pronouncing it right—in Colombia, where you said about military intervention in Venezuela...you didn't publicly refuse or rule it out, and part of your argument was that there were crimes against humanity that were occurring, which you and Mr. Cotler have outlined. However, when you made that comment, at around that same time the Lima Group, 11 of those countries, put out a statement in which they said they believe there should be a diplomatic solution.
On the one hand you're saying that there is the possibility of an intervention, but on the other hand the Lima Group is saying that they would prefer a diplomatic solution, so there tends to be no real agreement on the situation there.
What's your commentary on that? What do you believe the solution should be, intervention or diplomatic?