Donald Trump has claimed that he cancelled a second wave of attacks on Venezuela because it was cooperating with the US on oil infrastructure and had released political prisoners.
The US president said early on Friday that he cancelled planned military action in recognition that the authorities in Caracas had released “large numbers” of prisoners and were “seeking peace”.
“This is a very important and smart gesture,” Trump posted on social media. “The USA and Venezuela are working well together, especially as it pertains to rebuilding, in a much bigger, better, and more modern form, their oil and gas infrastructure. Because of this cooperation, I have cancelled the previously expected second Wave of Attacks, which looks like it will not be needed.”
Trump did not elaborate on the alleged plan for fresh strikes but said the US navy armada in the Caribbean would remain, leaving Washington with the ability to attack Venezuela at short notice. “All ships will stay in place for safety and security purposes.”
He said he would meet American oil industry figures later on Friday. “At least 100 Billion Dollars will be invested by BIG OIL, all of whom I will be meeting with today at the White House.”
Earlier, Venezuela announced the release of an “important number” of detainees.
In the hours that followed, however, human rights organisations were able to confirm only about a dozen releases and are pressing the regime to free all political prisoners, whom they estimate number between 800 and 1,000.
The former opposition candidate Enrique Márquez was among those released from prison, according to an opposition statement. “It’s all over now,” Márquez said in a video taken by a local journalist who accompanied him and his wife, as well as another freed opposition member, Biagio Pilieri.
Spain’s foreign ministry confirmed the release of five Spanish nationals, one of them a citizen with dual nationality, who it said were “preparing to travel to Spain with assistance from our embassy in Caracas”.
On Thursday, Trump said he planned soon to meet the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, in the wake of the 3 January raid that captured Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and threatened land strikes against drug cartels in Latin America.
Since 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 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 this week that she had not 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 Rodríguez’s government and that they were “giving us everything that we feel is necessary”.
The White House did not respon immediately when asked for additional details on the Machado meeting.
Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, said in an interview published on Friday by El País that during a one-hour phone call with Trump this week, “Trump told me he was thinking about doing bad things in Colombia. The message was that they were already preparing something, planning it – a military operation.”
Asked whether he feared suffering the same fate as Maduro, Petro said: “Undoubtedly. Nicolás Maduro, or any president in the world, can be removed if they do not align with certain interests.”
Petro addressed crowds in Bogotá at one of several demonstrations across the country that he called for last Wednesday. The protests, Petro said, were a defence against Trump’s threats.
“But what we use here is popular defence, and that is why I called for popular resistance on Wednesday,” he said, adding that he believed the White House’s threat against Colombia had, for now, “been frozen – but I could be mistaken”.
Trump told Fox News that it would take time for Venezuela to get to a place where it can hold elections.
US strikes on alleged drug boats in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea have killed more than 100 people since they began in September. They formed part of a concerted pressure campaign on Maduro that culminated in his dramatic abduction by US forces.
As part of that campaign, the US was understood to have conducted a strike on a docking area inside Venezuela, but land strikes 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 the broadcaster Sean Hannity 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.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
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