President Donald Trump will invite Delcy Rodríguez to Washington, who assumed the presidency of Venezuela on an interim basis after the fall of Nicolás Maduro in a US raid.
Rodríguez was Maduro’s vice president and took full power with changes in the ministerial cabinet and in 12 of the 28 regional commands of the Armed Forces.
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Washington reported on Wednesday that Rodríguez’s visit is planned, although the visit does not yet have a date: “Nothing has been scheduled,” he indicated.
The interim president will be the first Venezuelan leader to travel to the United States in more than a quarter of a century, if visits to United Nations meetings in New York are excluded.
The invitation shows Trump’s closeness to the interim government, after the bombing of Caracas on January 3 that led to the capture of the socialist leader.
“We are in a process of dialogue, of work with the United States, without any fear, to face the differences, the difficulties,” Rodríguez said this Wednesday without referring to the invitation.
She is still subject to sanctions from Washington, including asset freezes.
Trump said at the Davos Forum that “the country’s leaders have been very smart,” referring to Rodríguez. «Venezuela will make more money [con el petróleo] in the next six months than he did in the last 20 years.
The Republican had previously described Rodríguez as “formidable” and had assured that “everything is going very well” with her.
The new president signed oil agreements and agreed to release political prisoners, amid discussions to resume diplomatic relations broken since 2019.
Trump maintains in parallel an open front with the Venezuelan opposition. He said on Tuesday that he wanted to “involve” the head of the opposition and Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado, in the management of the country.
“The great cooperation”
The last Venezuelan president to travel to the United States for an official meeting with an American president dates back to 1990, when Carlos Andrés Pérez met with George HW Bush.
The socialist turn with Hugo Chávez (1999-2013) later cooled relations, which quickly became conflictive.
Investitured on January 5, two days after Maduro’s capture by US forces, Rodríguez made numerous concessions under pressure from the United States. Trump did not hesitate to threaten her with a new attack if she did not respond positively to his demands.
The president removed Alex Saab, designated as Maduro’s front man, from the body in charge of attracting international investments amid Trump’s plans for large American oil companies to operate in the country again. Today only Chevron does it.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) nevertheless questioned this Wednesday the possibility that oil production in the country could return to its historical levels, recalling that Venezuelan crude oil is extra-heavy and, therefore, complex and expensive to extract.
Rodríguez announced on Tuesday the income of the first 300 million dollars from the sale of Venezuelan oil by the United States.
Foreign currencies have been vital to the Venezuelan economy since 2018, when the dollar became the de facto currency in a context of serious economic crisis. But Venezuela is finding it difficult to obtain foreign currency due to the oil embargo imposed in 2019 by Washington on its main export product.
Military changes
On Wednesday, Rodríguez promoted a reorganization of the Armed Forces by naming the generals responsible for 12 of the 28 operational defense zones (ZODI), located in different states of the country.
The interim president previously appointed a former head of the intelligence service, Sebin, as the new commander of her presidential guard and as director of the DGCIM counterintelligence agency.
Meanwhile, powerful Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello denied meeting with U.S. officials before Maduro’s overthrow, while the ruling party he leads protests daily over the “kidnapping” of the deposed ruler and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Cabello denounced a “discredit campaign” promoted by the opposition against Rodríguez.
Meanwhile, the release of political prisoners is progressing in dribs and drabs with only about 150 releases out of a universe that exceeds 800.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) denounced that Venezuela maintains “clandestine detention centers.”
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