A US delegation arrived in Venezuela this Monday (27) to discuss the bilateral agenda and continue with the dialogues started in March between Washington and Caracas, announced the dictator Nicolás Maduro.
According to the leader of the Chavista regime, through the state broadcaster VTV, the head of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, received “an important delegation from the US government, which arrived in Venezuela two hours ago” and “works to give continuity to the relations, to the bilateral agenda”.
A spokesman for the US State Department, in turn, said that the US team is made up of the envoy for hostage affairs, Roger Carstens, and Ambassador James Story – they would have gone to the capital Caracas to discuss the situation of nationals detained in Venezuela.
After the Americans made their first visit three months ago, the Chavistas released Gustavo Cárdenas, one of six executives at Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuelan oil company PDVSA in the US, arrested in 2017 on charges of financial crimes, and Cuban-American Jorge Alberto Fernández. , tourist accused of terrorism in 2021, in an episode unrelated to the first case.
The initiative was also set against the backdrop of the Ukrainian War and the oil price explosion, as the US banned the import of oil, gas and coal from Russia. Geographically close, but in a diplomatic break for three years, Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world.
Bilateral relations have been strained since the rise of President Hugo Chávez to power in 1999, and reached its lowest level under the Donald Trump administration (2017-2021). The republican tried to overthrow the Chavista dictatorship by recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president.
In 2019, the year after Maduro’s widely contested re-election to a second six-year term, Washington severed diplomatic ties with Caracas and closed its embassy in the capital.
On the other hand, Venezuela and Russia have maintained close relations for decades. In the military area, for example, Moscow sold Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets and sent a navy fleet to carry out military exercises in the Caribbean. At the United Nations, the Maduro government did not vote in the session that condemned the invasion of Ukraine, although the main reason for this was the delay in paying debts with the organ.
It was Putin, along with China and Iran, who helped Maduro as the Americans applied embargoes on Venezuela’s energy sector and sanctions on the country’s officials in recent years. Oil is the most important sector of the Venezuelan economy and, before the sanctions, most of the product was exported to the US.
Now, Washington is trying to find alternatives to Russian oil and block Moscow’s influence in a strategic country. Venezuela is seeking to negotiate the end of sanctions against the Caribbean country.
This Monday, an official of the French Presidency said that the international community should explore all options to alleviate the reduction imposed by Russia in the supply of energy, which generated a rise in prices, including negotiations with producing countries such as Iran and Venezuela.
“There are resources elsewhere that need to be exploited,” a French official said on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Germany, when asked how to alleviate high oil prices.
