The top United States envoy to Venezuela has arrived in Caracas to reopen a US diplomatic mission, seven years after relations were severed.
Laura Dogu announced her arrival in a post on X on Saturday, saying: "My team and I are ready to work," reports the Telegraph.
The move comes almost a month after US forces kidnapped then-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from the presidential palace in Caracas, on the orders of US President Donald Trump.
Maduro was then sent to a prison in New York and is facing charges of drug trafficking and narcoterrorism conspiracy.
This action has been widely criticized as a violation of international law.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil wrote on Telegram that he had received Dogu and that the talks would focus on creating a "roadmap on issues of bilateral interest," as well as "addressing and resolving existing differences through diplomatic dialogue and based on mutual respect and international law."
Dogu, who previously served as U.S. ambassador to Honduras and Nicaragua, was appointed to the role of chargé d'affaires in the Venezuelan Affairs Unit, based at the U.S. embassy in Bogota, Colombia.
Venezuela and the US severed diplomatic relations in February 2019, a decision by Maduro after Trump gave public support to Venezuelan lawmaker Juan Guaido, who claimed to be the country's interim president in January of that year.
People's Power Minister of the Interior Diosdado Cabello, one of Venezuela's most powerful politicians and a Maduro loyalist, said earlier in January that reopening the US embassy in Caracas would give the Venezuelan government a way to oversee the treatment of the ousted president.
Although the Trump administration has claimed that Maduro's ouster was necessary for security reasons, officials have also consistently framed their interests in Venezuela around control of its vast oil reserves, which are the largest in the world.
Since the kidnapping, Trump has been pressuring interim President Delcy Rodriguez to open the country's nationalized oil sector to American firms.
The two countries have reached an agreement to export up to $2 billion in Venezuelan crude oil to the US, and on Thursday, Rodriguez signed into law a reform bill that will pave the way for increased privatization.
The legislation gives private firms control over the sale and production of Venezuelan oil and requires legal disputes to be resolved outside Venezuelan courts, a change long sought by foreign companies, which argue that the country's judicial system is dominated by the ruling socialist party.
The bill would also cap royalties collected by the government at 30 percent.
The Trump administration said on the same day that it would ease some sanctions on Venezuela's oil sector and allow limited transactions by the country's government and state oil company PDVSA, which were required for a long list of export-related activities involving a "established U.S. entity."
Trump has announced that he ordered the reopening of Venezuela's commercial airspace, and "informed" Rodriguez that US oil companies would soon arrive to explore potential projects in the country.
On Friday, Rodriguez announced an amnesty bill aimed at freeing hundreds of prisoners in the country and said he would close El Helicoide, a notorious secret service prison in Caracas, to be replaced with a sports and cultural center.
This action was one of the main demands of the Venezuelan opposition. /Telegraph/
