With US pressure mounting on Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader has said he is willing to hold face-to-face talks with representatives of the Trump administration, the BBC reports.
Maduro’s comments came only hours after US President Donald Trump said he had not ruled out deploying ground forces to the South American country.
Washington has fingered Maduro as the leader of a drugs cartel, a charge he has denied, claiming that the US is seeking to incite a war as a step to gaining control of Venezuela’s oil reserves.
The BBC notes that since Trump was sworn in to a second term in office in January, the US government has been increasing its pressure on Maduro.
It has doubled the reward it offers for information leading to his capture to $50m and in August launched a counternarcotics operation targeting boats it accuses of transporting drugs from Venezuela to the US.
More than 80 people have been killed in the US strikes on suspected vessels since, most of them in the Caribbean as well as some in the Pacific.
While, in his most recent comments, Trump would not “rule out” putting US troops on the ground in Venezuela, he also indicated a willing to talk to Maduro.
“I would probably talk to him, yeah… I talk to everybody,” Trump said.
This coincided with the US state department’s saying it “intended to designate Cartel de los Soles” – the drug trafficking gang it alleges is led by Maduro – as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO), but adding that, instead of doing so immediately, the designation would become effective only on 24 November.
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/eneas/53892681434]