>NEW: Venezuelan President Maduro secretly offered the Trump administration sweeping access to his country’s oil and mineral wealth in a bid to ease tensions and avoid possible US military action.

Over several months, Maduro’s envoys proposed giving American companies dominant stakes in Venezuela’s oil, gas, and gold projects, reversing crude exports from China to the US, and cutting energy ties with Russia, China, and Iran.

The Trump administration ultimately rejected the offer and severed diplomatic contact last week, ending months of back-channel negotiations.

Opposition leader María Corina Machado, recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, presented US officials with a rival plan promising greater economic potential under a democratic transition.

Source: NYT