VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION KEPT WAITING
Venezuela‘s main anti-Maduro figure Maria Corina Machado, who left in disguise to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize in October, wants to return home where she says the opposition would easily win a free vote.
But she is also taking care not to antagonise Trump, saying she would like to personally give him the Nobel prize which he had coveted and which she dedicated to him at the time. She says she is fully on board with his aspirations to make Venezuela a major ally of the US and the energy hub of the Americas.
Banned from running in a 2024 election, Machado’s ally Edmundo Gonzalez won overwhelmingly, according to the opposition, the US and various election observers.
While working with Rodriguez and other top Venezuelan officials, the US has warned they must cooperate or risk sharing Maduro’s fate.
Hardline Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who controls security forces accused of widespread rights abuses, is under particular scrutiny, sources told Reuters.
The US is also closely watching Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino, who like Cabello is under a US drug trafficking indictment and has a multi-million-dollar bounty on his head.
Rodriguez herself is under US sanctions, with her foreign financial assets identified as potential leverage, one source briefed on US administration thinking said.
The US is also pressuring the interim Venezuelan government to expel official advisers from China, Russia, Cuba and Iran, the New York Times reported.