Spanish
Caracas.- The acting president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, said this Friday that the reestablishment of relations with the United States is done "with friendship and with intelligence", after both countries confirmed on Thursday the resumption of the relationship broken since 2019, a fact that had been gestating after the capture in January of Nicolás Maduro.
"Let's do it with friendship, with willingness and with good intelligence and for the well-being of the Venezuelan people," said Rodríguez at an event in the El Maizal commune, in Lara state (west), a town often visited by Maduro.You may be interested in: http://Delcy Rodríguez denies US governs in Venezuela and affirms that the country maintains its sovereignty
The president cited in this way a letter from the Caracas liberator Simón Bolívar from 1818 in which he reported on the establishment of relations with the United States, when James Monroe was president. "We are going to resolve our historical differences face to face, we are going to resolve them through diplomatic channels," he insisted, without going into further details. The U.S. State Department announced this Thursday the reopening of diplomatic and consular relations, just hours after the departure of U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum from Venezuela. Subsequently, the Venezuelan government confirmed the reestablishment of relations and reaffirmed in a statement "its willingness to move forward in a new stage of constructive dialogue, based on mutual respect, the sovereign equality of States and cooperation between our peoples". After Maduro's capture on January 3rd, Caracas and Washington began a process of diplomatic rapprochement, while the Donald Trump administration reported the implementation of a three-phase process - stabilization, recovery, and democratic transition - for the future of Venezuela, for which it has bet on Rodríguez to pilot the first of these stages. At the end of January, Washington designated U.S. diplomat Laura Dogu as chargé d'affaires in Caracas, while Venezuelan Félix Plasencia was appointed days later as diplomatic representative to the United States. Since then, Rodríguez has received several high-ranking U.S. officials, including Burgum, Dogu, and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. Diplomatic ties between the United States and Venezuela remained broken since early 2019, during Trump's first term, when Washington recognized the opposition and then-speaker of Parliament, Juan Guaidó, as interim president, to which Maduro responded by breaking relations.
