Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

A mere week af­ter Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro was oust­ed in an in­ter­ven­tion by the US mil­i­tary, there seems to be the be­gin­ning of a diplo­mat­ic thaw be­tween the US and the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela.

Ac­cord­ing to Venezuela’s Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs, a diplo­mat­ic del­e­ga­tion from Venezuela will trav­el to the US to dis­cuss the re­sump­tion of bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions, while a del­e­ga­tion of diplo­mats from the US State De­part­ment ar­rived in the coun­try yes­ter­day.

The Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment is­sued a state­ment, shared by For­eign Min­is­ter Yván Gil, in­form­ing that fol­low­ing the US ag­gres­sion against the coun­try, the de­ci­sion was made to “ini­ti­ate an ex­plorato­ry diplo­mat­ic process with the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.”

The state­ment said this ac­tion is aimed at the reestab­lish­ment of diplo­mat­ic mis­sions in both coun­tries, “with the pur­pose of ad­dress­ing the con­se­quences of the ag­gres­sion and kid­nap­ping of the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic and the First La­dy, as well as ad­dress­ing a work agen­da of mu­tu­al in­ter­est.”

He added that the US State De­part­ment del­e­ga­tion that ar­rived in the coun­try will con­duct tech­ni­cal and lo­gis­ti­cal as­sess­ments in­her­ent to the diplo­mat­ic func­tion.

The Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and In­for­ma­tion, Fred­dy Ñáñez, in a Telegram post, al­so made it clear that Venezuela’s act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez does not plan to trav­el out­side of Venezuela in the com­ing days.

In re­sponse to ru­mours of a pos­si­ble trip cir­cu­lat­ing in some me­dia out­lets, the Vice Pres­i­dent for Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Cul­ture clar­i­fied that all the ef­forts of the act­ing pres­i­dent are “fo­cused as a gov­ern­ment on the do­mes­tic agen­da to guar­an­tee our peo­ple’s right to peace and sta­bil­i­ty.”

This rules out her de­par­ture from the coun­try, at least in the short term.

It was al­so an­nounced that a Venezue­lan del­e­ga­tion will be sent to the US, but no de­tails were pro­vid­ed.

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump yes­ter­day said he “can­celled the pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pect­ed sec­ond Wave of At­tacks” on Venezuela be­cause it’s been “work­ing well to­geth­er” with the US.

Pres­i­dent Trump al­so met with ma­jor ex­ec­u­tives from the oil in­dus­try as he push­es US oil com­pa­nies to in­vest in build­ing up in­fra­struc­ture in Venezuela fol­low­ing Maduro’s ouster.