UNION of South American Nations (Unasur) secretary-general Ernesto Samper said on Sunday that the release of several jailed opposition figures “shows dialogue is the path for Venezuela.”

He welcomed the New Year’s Eve concession to the Democratic Unity Roundtable (Mud) opposition in a tweet from Ecuador’s capital Quito, seat of the bloc.

Among those released was unsuccessful 2006 presidential candidate Manuel Rosales, jailed on corruption charges in 2015 after returning from Peru after six years on the run.

Mr Samper is one of several international figures mediating talks between President Nicolas Maduro’s United Socialist Party government and the Mud, to which Mr Rosales’s A New Era party is affiliated.

Also released were several right-wing student leaders of the 2014 Guarimba regime-change riots that left 43 people dead.

The Mud has threatened to boycott the next round of talks on January 13 if Mr Maduro does not release more than 100 other prisoners and appoint a new board to the independent National Electoral Council.