Brazil’s National Security Adviser Augusto Heleno said on Tuesday that right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro had not offered to host a U.S. military base or American soldiers on Brazilian soil, Reuters reported.

Bolsonaro said during a TV interview last week that he was open to the possibility of hosting a U.S. base to counter Russian influence in Venezuela, while his Foreign Minister, Ernesto Araujo, said last week that Bolsonaro was planning to discuss a U.S. military presence with U.S. President Donald Trump during an expected visit in March.

“He told me he never said that. It was a comment he made when talking about the Russian base (in Venezuela) and then suddenly this came out that it was an American base,” Heleno told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

The plan to offer to host a base appears to have been dropped due to opposition from the armed forces, who see a foreign presence as a transgression of national sovereignty.