Venezuelan VP denounces U.S. unilateral sanctions as new form of "neocolonialism"

CARACAS, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez on Tuesday denounced the unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries as "new mechanisms of neocolonialism."

"Sanctions are, along with war, the central axis of the foreign policy of the United States," Rodriguez told the Caribbean Regional Seminar of the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization, which opened Tuesday in Venezuela's capital Caracas.

This policy, she said, harmed countries in the region such as Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela and their right to self-determination.

"It is an international embarrassment that in the 21st century...the aim is to subjugate countries through the mechanism of economic sanctions," she said.

Venezuela has been subjected to almost a thousand unilateral coercive measures, or sanctions, in a bid to "change its course of independence and self-determination," said the vice president.

That has led to "232 billion U.S. dollars" in losses to Venezuela's GDP over five years, she said.