Kingston, April 10 (RHC) — U.S. President Barack Obama admitted on Thursday in Jamaica that Venezuela is not a threat to US National Security, but he added that sanctions announced last month are still in force.

Venezuela is not a threat to the United States and the United States is not a threat to the Venezuelan government, said the president in statements to Spain´s EFE news agency.

In effort to justify his decree, highly repudiated in Latin America and in other parts of the world, Obama said that the Venezuelan government keeps making efforts to intimidate its political adversaries, so his March 9 executive order is aimed at countering human rights violations and corruption in the South American nation.

And then he added that the sanctions stipulated by the decree are not aimed at undermining the Venezuelan government or promoting instability in Venezuela, since he considered that the sanctions go against some persons he described as responsible for the persecution of political adversaries, limiting freedom of the press and carrying out arbitrary detentions.

But the Bolivarian government made it clear that any action against a Venezuelan citizens represents an attempt against the whole country.