Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Maham Javaid
Washington: US President Donald Trump said he would accept the Nobel Peace Prize if this year’s prize winner, María Corina Machado, offered it to him when she meets with him next week, but Nobel officials quickly announced that the prize may not be shared or transferred.
“Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared or transferred to others,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee and the Norwegian Nobel Institute said. “The decision is final and stands for all time.”
“I understand she’s coming in next week sometime, and I look forward to saying hello to her,” Trump said of the Venezuelan opposition leader during an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
Trump added that he had heard Machado wants to give him the prize, and that it would be “a great honour”.
On Friday, the US and Venezuela took halting first steps towards a resumption of diplomacy.
A delegation of Venezuelan diplomats is expected to arrive in Washington in coming days, according to a statement by the Venezuelan government.
Diplomatic and security staff from the US Venezuela Affairs Unit – including John McNamara, the interim chargé d’affaires – also travelled to Caracas, according to a US official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel movements in a fluid security environment.
The Venezuelan delegation and US diplomats will discuss how the diplomatic missions in both countries can be re-established after “the aggression and the kidnapping of the president of the Republic and the first lady”, the Venezuelan government said in a statement, referring to the capture by the US of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores.
It is unclear whether the newly sworn in interim President Delcy Rodríguez would be part of the Venezuelan delegation arriving in Washington.
The White House on Friday morning did not provide details about Machado’s trip or specify what issues she and Trump would discuss.
In an interview with Hannity this week in which she heaped praise on Trump, Machado said she had not spoken to the US president since October, when she was announced as the latest Nobel laureate.
She had been in hiding in Venezuela during President Nicolás Maduro’s last days in power and turned up in Oslo, where her daughter accepted the prize on her behalf. But she promised to return to her country and called for elections to replace Maduro.
“But I do want to say today, on behalf of the Venezuelan people, how grateful we are for [Trump’s] courageous mission,” Machado said on Hannity’s show this week, adding that she and the Venezuelan people want to “share” the prize with Trump after the US military seized Maduro and his wife and brought them to New York to stand trial on narco-terrorism charges.
Trump has openly coveted and publicly lobbied for the Nobel Peace Prize, claiming to have “solved” a number of international conflicts. Several world leaders have backed his claims.
Machado, a former National Assembly member, won the opposition primary in Venezuela two years ago but was barred from running by Maduro in the general election.
Maduro claimed victory over the candidate Machado backed, but ballot audits by The Washington Post and independent monitors show the reported election result was invalid.
Following the US operation to arrest Maduro on Saturday, Trump said that the US would “run” Venezuela with the co-operation of Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president, who has become the country’s acting leader.
Trump has not given a timeline for when elections would be held and said he did not believe Machado had the support to run the country after Maduro’s removal.
“I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader,” Trump told reporters last weekend.
“She doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within, the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.”
Two people close to the White House previously told The Washington Post that Trump was not willing to support Machado because she had accepted the Peace Prize.
“If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s’, she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” one of the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.
Machado told Hannity she believed that if elections were held, she would win the presidency in a landslide.
The Washington Post
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