Venezuela Envoy in Washington After CIA Chief Visits Caracas
(Bloomberg) --
A senior envoy for Venezuela’s new government is set to meet with US officials in Washington on Friday, according to people familiar with the matter, as the White House firms up its relationship with acting President Delcy Rodriguez’s administration in Caracas.
Ambassador Felix Plasencia, the chief of mission at Venezuela’s embassy in London and a former foreign minister, was meeting with State Department officials, said the people, declining to be named discussing private meetings. He also planned to visit the country’s mission in Washington, the people said.
Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe went to Caracas for talks with Rodriguez on Thursday, holding a two-hour meeting aimed at building trust and laying the groundwork for continued communications and collaboration between the White House and the Venezuelan government, a US official said, declining to be named to detail the trip.
Ratcliffe traveled to Venezuela with a small team at President Donald Trump’s direction and stressed the Venezuelan government needed to end support for criminal organizations including Tren de Aragua, the US official said.
Venezuela’s envoy, Plasencia, is visiting the US at the same time as opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, whose party has been effectively frozen out of the transition in Caracas after the US ouster of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro.
Machado met with Donald Trump on Thursday and gave him her Nobel Peace Prize medal in a clear attempt to win back his favor, given the US president has long contended he deserves the prize for his efforts to end conflicts in Gaza and elsewhere. But it was unclear whether the gesture will have much impact.
Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have left the Venezuelan regime largely intact. After the Special Forces raid in Caracas on Jan. 3, they handed control to Rodriguez, Maduro’s No. 2, in an attempt to prioritize near-term stability — as well as control of the country’s vast oil reserves, the world’s largest.
Asked Friday why he would accept someone else’s medal, Trump said he thought “it was very nice” gesture and added Machado told him that no one deserved it more.
Trump cited the chaos that followed the dismantling of Iraq’s security forces after the US invasion in 2003 to justify backing Rodriguez and the remnants of Maduro’s administration in Caracas. “Instead of just getting down to business, they ended up being ISIS — so I remember that,” Trump told reporters.
“But I’ll tell you, I had a great meeting yesterday by a person who I have a lot of respect for, and she has respect, obviously, for me and our country, and she gave me her Nobel Prize,” he added, saying he was impressed by Machado. “She’s a very fine woman, and we’ll be talking again.”
Earlier Friday, Machado criticized the Rodriguez regime at an event organized by the Heritage Foundation think tank, arguing the regime the US left in place is the same one that cultivated Venezuela’s relationships with US geopolitical foes, including hosting the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah.
“I want to insist on this — Delcy Rodriguez, yes, she’s a communist, she’s the main ally and representation of the Russian regime, the Chinese and Iranians,” Machado told reporters. She also said Rodriguez was responsible for repressing Venezuelans and locking them up in “torture centers.”
The opposition leader also said she was “absolutely grateful to President Trump, his team, his administration, and the people of the United States, because it took a lot of courage” to launch the raid that captured Maduro and brought him to the US to face charges. She added that she understood the “urgency” of a democratic transition in Venezuela, but declined to give a timeline for new elections beyond saying they’d be held as soon as possible.
“This is a process that has several phases,” Machado said. “We are in one that’s complex, as I said, in which the regime is forced to dismantle themselves” and “some of the structures that have been maintaining them in power.”
The State Department and the White House didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on Plasencia’s visit.
(Updates with Trump comments in eighth paragraph.)
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