In a historic move, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), John Ratcliffe, met with Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez in Caracas on Thursday. The two-hour meeting, which took place at the direction of President Donald Trump, aimed to build trust and communication following the US seizure of former President Nicolás Maduro nearly two weeks ago.
According to a US official, Ratcliffe and Rodríguez discussed potential economic collaboration, with the US official stating that “Venezuela can no longer be a safe haven for America’s adversaries.” The meeting came on the same day that Rodríguez delivered her first state of the union address since taking over as interim president, where she announced reforms to Venezuela’s oil industry to allow for more foreign investment – a significant shift from Maduro’s policies.
During her speech, Rodríguez expressed a willingness to engage in diplomatic dialogue with the US, stating that Venezuela must defend its “dignity and honour.” This comes as President Trump has said that US oil companies will move into Venezuela and make money that will benefit both the Venezuelan people and the US, with a top official stating that the US would control sales of sanctioned Venezuelan oil “indefinitely.”
Trump has asked oil companies to invest at least $100 billion (£75 billion) in Venezuela, but one executive said last week that the country is currently “uninvestable.” Rodríguez, the former vice-president, was sworn in on 5 January after US forces seized Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in an operation in Caracas. They are now detained in New York, where they have pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges.
The US official described the meeting between Rodríguez and Ratcliffe as “historic,” adding that Ratcliffe was the first cabinet-level official to travel to Venezuela. The meeting also happened on the same day that Trump met with opposition leader Maria Corina Machado in Washington, who presented the US president with her Nobel Peace Prize winning medal.
In her state of the union address, Rodríguez told Venezuelans that it was “very difficult” to deliver Maduro’s annual report, saying that the two were working on the speech together until six hours before his seizure on 3 January. Noting that the US is a nuclear power, the interim president said she was not afraid to engage in diplomacy, stating that “we have to go together as Venezuelans to defend sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and also defend our dignity and our honour.”
She added that if she needed to travel to Washington DC to meet with Trump, she would do so “walking on her feet, not dragged there,” and called for national unity to “wage the diplomatic battle.” Rodríguez’s reforms to the country’s hydrocarbon law, which would allow for more foreign investment in new fields, come as Trump and American investors eye opportunities in Venezuela, which holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves.
