Menendez to Biden: Negotiations with Maduro could perpetuate humanitarian crisis

Sen. Bob Menendez expressed on Monday "serious concerns" about the possibility that alleged negotiations between President Joe Biden's Administration and Nicolás Maduro's regime to buy Venezuelan oil could "perpetuate a humanitarian crisis that has destabilized Latin America and the Caribbean for an entire generation."

Menéndez also expressed his "strong" opposition to the possibility of the White House relaxing its sanctions on Venezuela to contain the price of crude oil in global markets.

"The democratic aspirations of the Venezuelan people, like the determination and courage of the Ukrainian people, are worth far more than a few thousand barrels of oil," Menendez said in a statement.

Menendez, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reacted to press reports claiming that Biden had sent high-level government officials to Venezuela to study the possibility of lifting sanctions on the Venezuelan oil sector.

The senator advised Biden to avoid encouraging U.S. adversaries "to capture American citizens to use them as mere bargaining chips," referring to the talks on the fate of the Citgo Six (the name by which six top executives of Citgo, a subsidiary of the state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and the three other Americans imprisoned in Venezuela are known).

Las aspiraciones democráticas del pueblo venezolano, al igual que el coraje del pueblo de Ucrania, valen mucho más que unos pocos miles de barriles de petróleo. Mis declaraciones sobre supuestas negociaciones de la Administración con el régimen de Maduro⬇️https://t.co/LtO65mRc4s

— Senator Bob Menendez (@SenatorMenendez) March 8, 2022

Republican Senator Marco Rubio also said on Monday that the Biden Administration made a "ridiculous, dangerous and shameful offer" to the Maduro regime.

“The offer is as follows: The United States is willing to lift sanctions against Venezuela and against Maduro, if he is willing to sell us oil, and if he announces a future date for negotiations with the opposition," Rubio explained in a statement on his Twitter account.

Rubio also said that Biden's offer has nothing to do with the Russia-Ukraine conflict, since from the beginning, "this Administration sought to settle with Maduro and seeks to settle with Cuba."