The Nobel Peace Prize organisers have said a prize cannot be revoked, transferred or shared – after Donald Trump said he would accept it from winner Maria Corina Machado.
The Norwegian Nobel Institute said that once the Peace Prize is given out, the decisiion is ‘final’, and ‘stands for all time’.
Maria Corina Machado won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for promoting the democratic rights of the people of Venezuela.
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, said: ‘She had stood up for free and fair elections for the last 20 years.’
‘She has spent years working for the freedom of the Venezuelan people’. Ahead of the 2024 election, she was the opposition’s candidate but the machine blocked her candidacy.’
But after winning, she said she wanted to give or share the prize with Trump after he captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.
‘I certainly would love to be able to personally tell him that we believe – the Venezuelan people, because this is a prize of the Venezuelan people – certainly want to, to give it to him and share it with Trump,’ Machado said.
‘What he has done is historic. It’s a huge step towards a democratic transition.’
Trump described Machado as a ‘very nice woman’ but claimed she didn’t have the backing to govern Venezuela.
His decision to place Delcy Rodriguez as the interim president of Venezuela after Maduro’s capture, instead of Machado has led some to believe it’s because he didn’t win the Nobel Prize.
What’s next for Venezuela?
What will be crucial to Venezuela’s future will be their vast oil reserves, which are estimated to total more than 300 billion barrels.
Nearly a million barrels a day flowed to China, southern Europe and the US last month.
Trump said: ‘We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies… go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure. We’ll be selling large amounts of oil.’
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC how the US will be ‘running’ things: ‘It’s not running — it’s running policy, the policy.’
‘The goal of the policy is to see changes in Venezuela that are beneficial to the United States, first and foremost, because that’s who we work for, but also we believe beneficial for the people of Venezuela who have suffered tremendously.’
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