President Donald Trump has said that Venezuela’s airspace will soon be reopened to commercial flights from the United States, claiming the country was under “very strong control” and that Americans would be safe to travel there.
Trump announced the decision during a cabinet meeting on Thursday, saying he had instructed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, as well as the US military, to reopen Venezuelan airspace to US flights.
“I just spoke to the president of Venezuela, informed her that we’re going to be opening up all commercial airspace over Venezuela,” the president said. “American citizens will be, very shortly, able to go to Venezuela, and they’ll be safe there. It’s under very strong control.”
Though the State Department has maintained its travel warning for the country, later on Thursday American Airlines announced that it planned to resume flights to Venezuela, pending official approval and its own security assessments.
During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that Venezuela had become “a base of operation for virtually every competitor, adversary, and enemy in the world,” citing China, Russia and Iran by name. He added that the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was necessary to create a “free, fair, prosperous, and friendly Venezuela.”
“And so objective number one was stability. In the aftermath of the removal of Maduro, the concern was what happens in Venezuela. Is there civil war? Do the different factions start going at each other? Are a million people crossing the border into Colombia? All of that has been avoided,” Rubio told lawmakers. He refused to rule out the prospect for further military action in the country.
In conjunction with the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Transportation barred most commercial flights to Venezuela in May 2019, offering only limited exemptions. The restrictions were further stepped up earlier this month following the US operation to kidnap Maduro, with a temporary emergency Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) issued to all civil flights on January 3.
Maduro was accused of collaborating with local drug cartels to distribute narcotics, with the State Department offering a reward of up to $50 million for assistance that resulted in his capture. Those allegations remain questionable, however, with the US government-funded thinktank InSight Crime finding no credible evidence to suggest that Maduro played any significant role in drug trafficking.
Despite the US capture of Maduro, Trump on Thursday claimed that Washington maintained a “very strong” relationship with the Venezuelan leadership under its de facto president, Delcy Rodríguez, saying, “We’re getting along really well with them.”
