The White House reported that a US delegation held talks with Venezuelan government officials in Caracas, including President Nicolas Maduro, over the weekend, including on energy resources.
“The purpose of the administration officials’ trip to Venezuela was to discuss a range of issues, including energy and energy security,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters.
Psaki stressed that the delegation also touched upon the “health and well-being” of a number of Americans detained in the country, including six oil executives who have been imprisoned since 2017, but stressed the energy talks and their fate. There are “two separate traces and speeches” among the detainees.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro confirmed the meeting in a televised interview last night, describing the meeting as “respectful and diplomatically friendly” without going into details on the issues touched on.
“It was done in the President’s office,” he said. “We talked for about two hours.” “It seemed very important to me to be able to discuss issues that are very important to Venezuela face to face,” he said.
The US has imposed a package of sanctions on Caracas to remove Maduro from power, including preventing Venezuela from trading its crude oil, which represents 96 percent of the country’s revenues, on the American market since 2019.
The New York Times reported that the current visit of senior US State Department and White House officials to Caracas is also linked to Washington’s interest in continuing to import oil from Venezuela, rather than the quantities it currently buys from Russia.
Source: AFP
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