DAVOS, Switzerland –Venezuela’s interim president will soon visit the United States, a senior US official said Wednesday, further signaling President Donald Trump’s willingness to embrace the oil-rich country’s new leader.
Delcy Rodriguez would be the first sitting Venezuelan president to visit the United States in more than a quarter century — aside from presidents attending United Nations meetings in New York.
She said Wednesday that she approached any dialogue with the United States “without fear.”
“We are in a process of dialogue, of working with the United States, without any fear, to confront our differences and difficulties… and to address them through diplomacy,” said Rodriguez.
The invitation reflects a head-snapping shift in relations between Washington and Caracas since US Delta Force operatives swooped into Caracas, seized president Nicolas Maduro and spirited him to a US jail to face narcotrafficking charges.
Rodriguez was a former vice president and long-time insider in Venezuela’s authoritarian and anti-American government, before changing tack as interim president.
She is still the subject of US sanctions, including an asset freeze.
But with a flotilla of US warships still amassed off the Venezuelan coast, she has allowed the United States to broker the sale of Venezuelan oil, facilitated foreign investment and released dozens of political prisoners.
A senior White House official said Rodriguez would visit soon, but no date has been set.
The last bilateral visit by a sitting Venezuelan president came in the 1990s — before populist leader Hugo Chavez took power.
