Less than a week after the US snatched its President under the cover of night, Venezuela said it was exploring restoring diplomatic ties and sending a delegation to Washington to check on its long-shuttered embassy, according to a statement from the interim President, Delcy Rodríguez.
Her government and President Trump's, according to Rodríguez, had decided to "initiate an exploratory diplomatic process" that was "aimed at the re-establishment of diplomatic missions in both countries".
On Friday, US diplomats visited Caracas, Venezuela's capital, to assess a "potential" resumption of embassy operations for the first time in nearly seven years, a spokeswoman for the state department confirmed.
The announcements on Friday appeared to represent only tentative first steps, and the relationship between the two countries is changing daily, experts noted.
But news of the possible restoration of diplomatic ties drew attention not only for the breakneck pace at which the two countries' relationship was evolving, but also because of the head-spinning contradictions it seemed to embody.
It came as Trump said he was getting along "extremely well" with Venezuela's government, even though that government is more or less the same government it was a week ago — minus President Nicolás Maduro — when Trump was mounting his intense pressure campaign.
And it came as Vice-President J.D. Vance celebrated that the US military had been "empowered" by Trump to go after drug cartels — presumably the same groups that a federal indictment said worked closely with the Venezuelan government.
Rodríguez announced the move in a statement that began by denouncing the "kidnapping" of Maduro and a US operation that she said had resulted in dozens of deaths and represented a flagrant violation of the "international legal order".
She added that Venezuela was beginning the "diplomatic exploratory process" in order to "address the consequences arising from the aggression and the kidnapping of the President of the republic and the First Lady, as well as to pursue a working agenda of mutual interest". On Friday, Trump was prodding American energy executives to quickly tap Venezuela's vast oil reserves, and the US military intercepted another tanker carrying Venezuelan oil.
The US embassy in Caracas has been closed since early 2019, when Maduro expelled US diplomats there in response to Washington's recognition of the Opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, as interim President after an election that the US criticised as anti-democratic. Maduro closed the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, a trim brick building in the Georgetown neighbourhood, at the same time.
New York Times News Service