Donald Trump and Nicolás Maduro spoke by phone last week. And they addressed the possibility of seeing each other face to face, according to The New York Times published this Friday. The information is known the day after the US president announced a “prompt” ground intervention to combat alleged “narcoterrorist groups” after a three-month campaign in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific with 21 attacks and 83 reported deaths.
During the phone call, NYT reports, they addressed the hypothesis of a possible meeting between them, in the midst of the US military threat against Venezuela. The conversation took place at the end of the week, according to the newspaper, and there are currently no plans for such a meeting.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio participated in the conference and it took place days before the State Department’s designation of Maduro as the alleged leader of what the administration considers a foreign terrorist organization, the alleged Suns cartel, came into effect.
The New York Times reported in October that Maduro had offered the United States a significant stake in the country’s oil fields, along with other offers to American companies, in order to ease tensions. But U.S. representatives broke off those talks early last month because they are demanding Maduro’s departure from power.
It remains to be seen what the call translates into at a time when the Trump Administration has been using missile attacks to bomb vessels that, according to the US, are engaged in drug trafficking without providing any evidence of their allegations.
The United States has also sent an aircraft carrier to the waters near Venezuela, and Air Force bombers to the region, in addition to having prepared covert action plans and has regularly threatened the use of force.
On Thanksgiving night, this Thursday Trump, flanked by military leaders, said that attacks to stop drug traffickers would transition to ground operations: “Land is easier, but that is going to start very soon”:
“Kill them all”
The order was from Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War. And it occurred before the first attack against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, on September 2, according to The Washington Post this Friday: “The order was to kill everyone.”
A missile whizzed off the coast of Trinidad, hitting the ship and starting a fire from bow to stern. For several minutes, commanders watched the ship burn via live drone footage. When the smoke cleared, they got a surprise: two survivors were clinging to the smoldering remains, TWP reports.
The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the first action in the Trump administration’s war against suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were left destroyed in the water.
Hegseth’s order, which had not been previously released, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers.
Some current and former US officials, as well as experts in the law of war, have asserted that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign – which has killed more than 80 people to date – is illegal and could expose those most directly involved to future prosecutions, TWP recalls.
Source: www.eldiario.es
