WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) – The CIA director met with Venezuela’s interim leader in Caracas and the country’s opposition leader was due to speak to reporters in Washington on Friday as the two sides navigate their new relationships with U.S. President Donald Trump following his administration’s attack early this year.
Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe is the most senior known U.S. official to meet with Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela’s acting president, since Trump attacked Caracas on January 3, capturing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a socialist, and his wife.
The two met on Thursday, the same day that Maria Corina Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s liberal opposition party, met Trump at the White House, where she gave him the medal she had received after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year, an honor Trump has publicly coveted.
Machado is due to discuss her meeting with reporters on Friday at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington with close ties to the Trump administration. After leaving the White House on Thursday, she described the meeting as excellent. Trump, in turn, warmly thanked Machado for the medal, describing it on social media as “a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.”
In Caracas, Rodriguez appeared to deride Machado as she gave her first State of the Union address on Thursday, telling Venezuelans that if she should visit Washington, “I will do so with my head held high, walking, not on my knees.”
Ratcliffe, the CIA chief, met with Rodriguez at Trump’s direction “to deliver the message that the United States looks forward to an improved working relationship,” according to a U.S. official.
The two of them discussed intelligence cooperation, economic stability and the need to ensure Venezuela was no longer a “safe haven for America’s adversaries, especially narco-traffickers,” according to the U.S. official.
(Reporting by Steve Holland and Gram Slattery in Washington and Erin Banco in New York; Writing by Jonathan Allen; editing by Scott Malone, Rod Nickel)
