MEXICO CITY, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Mexico's foreign minister said on Friday that Mexico would never support a violent solution to the crisis in Venezuela, whether internal or external, a day after U.S Secretary of State Rex Tillerson raised the prospect of a military uprising. Videgaray, who said Mexico would use all available diplomatic means to address the situation in Venezuela, spoke after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland in Mexico City. Mexico’s government, and particularly the foreign ministry, has pushed hard to defend NAFTA, a lynchpin of its export-led economy, ahead of a July 2018 election in which the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party is currently polling third. Earlier on Thursday, in a speech at his alma mater University of Texas at Austin, Tillerson raised the prospect that the Venezuelan military could decide to oust President Nicolas Maduro but said he did not know whether that would happen.
Mexico's Secretary of Foreign Affairs Luis Videgaray Caso, flanked by visiting United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Canadian counterpart Chrystia Freeland, rejects "any option that would imply the use of violence" on the subject of Venezuela. On the eve of his visit, Tillerson had defended the 19th-century United States policy in Latin America and suggested that the Venezuelan Army could manage a "peaceful transition" from President Nicolás Maduro.