Less than a week after the United States snatched its president under 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,
The New York Times reports.
Her government and President Trump’s, according to Ms. Rodríguez, had decided to “initiate an exploratory diplomatic process” that was “aimed at the re-establishment of diplomatic missions in both countries.”
On Friday, U.S. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. Trump was mounting his intense pressure campaign.
And it came as Vice President JD Vance celebrated that the U.S. military had been “empowered” by Mr. Trump to go after drug cartels — presumably the same groups that a federal indictment said worked closely with the Venezuelan government.
To add to the contradictions, Ms. Rodríguez announced the move in a statement that began by denouncing the “kidnapping” of Mr. Maduro and a U.S. 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.”
