Venezuela pays a "high cost" to gain allies, analysts say

The summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) ended on Sunday in Caracas. During the meeting, two countries applied for membership and Venezuela offered to use part of its international reserves for cooperation projects with other countries.

"We are paying a high price for these circumstantial alliances," said Ambassador Edmundo González, a member of the international affairs committee of Venezuela's opposition umbrella group Unified Democratic Panel (MUD).

González added that "these projects, which are based on ideological grounds, particularly the anti-US sentiment, are not long-lasting. These schemes will remain in place as long as Venezuela's largesse allows it to fund cooperation projects."

Suriname and St. Lucia started to take steps to become full members of ALBA, while Haiti is pondering such possibility.

"I am very concerned about this issue, because we do not know a lot about this bank (the Bank of ALBA)," said Maruja Tarre Briceño, a Venezuelan expert in international affairs.

She expressed fears that the reserves transferred to the Bank of ALBA will have the same fate as "the huge amounts of petrodollars that entered Venezuela and vanished."