Trump says he will meet Venezuela opposition leader Machado, and threatens drug cartel land strikes

Donald Trump has said he plans to meet Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, days after launching an attack that resulted in the capture of the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and threatened land strikes against drug cartels in Latin America.

In the aftermath of that operation, the future governance of the South American country has remained an open question, with Trump over the weekend dismissing the idea of working with popular opposition leader Machado, saying “she doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.”

But in a Fox News interview on Thursday, the US president said Machado was “coming in next week sometime,” adding that “I look forward to saying hello to her”.

Asked whether he would accept Machado’s Nobel peace prize if she gave it to him, Trump said: “I’ve heard that she wants to do that. That’d be a great honour.”

This will be Trump’s first meeting with Machado, who said earlier this week that she hadn’t spoken to the US president since she won the prize in October.

Trump has not publicly made the same offer to Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s interim president, although in an interview with the New York Times on Wednesday, Trump said the US was “getting along very well” with the government of Rodríguez, and that they were “giving us everything that we feel is necessary”.

The White House did not immediately respond when reached for additional details on the Machado meeting.

On Thursday, Rodríguez’s government began releasing a “important number” of political prisoners, including several foreigners, in an apparent concession to the US. Former Venezuelan opposition candidate Enrique Marquez was among those released.

Machado hailed the release of political prisoners, saying in an audio message on social media: “Injustice will not last forever and … truth, although it be wounded, ends up finding its way.”

However, Trump told Fox News that it will take time for the South American country to get to a place where it can hold elections.

Trump on Thursday also referred back to the US strikes on alleged drug boats in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea that have killed more than 100 people since they began in September. The strikes formed part of a concerted pressure campaign on Maduro that culminated in his dramatic abduction by US forces over the weekend.

As part of that campaign, the US was understood to have conducted a strike on a docking area inside Venezuela, but his threat of land strikes on Thursday would mark a significant escalation, with suggestions they could target cartels in Mexico.

“We are going to start now hitting land with regard to the cartels. The cartels are running Mexico,” Trump told broadcaster Sean Hannity in the interview on Fox News.

Trump has previously raised the option of striking targets inside Mexico, and said on Sunday he was pushing the country’s president Claudia Sheinbaum to let him send US troops to tackle the drug cartels there, an offer he said she had previously rebuffed.

Sheinbaum said on Monday that the Americas “do not belong” to any power, after Trump invoked Washington’s “dominance” of the hemisphere after seizing Maduro.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse