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Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Oliver Blanco in Washington on Monday, reaffirming the Trump administration’s step-by-step plan to move Venezuela toward elections nearly a year after the US captured Nicolás Maduro.
Getting into it: Neither man spoke to reporters, but the State Department said the two discussed progress in Venezuela’s reconciliation talks and reforms meant to set up “free, fair, and credible elections,” and that Rubio pushed for the release of the country’s remaining political prisoners, of which civil society groups count at least 400. Rubio also reaffirmed Trump’s three-phase plan for Venezuela: stabilization, then economic recovery and political reconciliation, then a democratic transition. Blanco separately met with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said the US wants to help rebuild Venezuela’s economy and boost its oil and gas output.
The meeting came two weeks after interim President Delcy Rodríguez’s government and some opposition groups signed off on a plan to overhaul the country’s election system, with a vote expected sometime in 2027. Under the US plan, Rodríguez would declare the presidency permanently vacant once reforms are done, starting a six-month clock to elections, according to a senior State Department official. Rubio said last week that Venezuela’s current election system was built to rig votes and has to be replaced first.
The plan now has to account for opposition leader María Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and easily the most popular politician in the country, who returned to Venezuela last week and said the US has laid out a path to presidential elections in 2027. Her party, Vente Venezuela, isn’t part of the reconciliation talks, though the State Department says it was invited and didn’t show up.
Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president and has run the country with Washington looking over her shoulder since his capture in January, has promised elections “with the world as witness” without giving a date, and called Machado’s return a “show.” Machado has also raised doubts about the oil deal the US struck with Rodríguez’s government, which gives a company partly owned by the Pentagon 100-year rights to oil fields holding an estimated 65 billion barrels.
“This agreement does not reflect the levels of transparency that Venezuelan society wants,” Machado said.
This all comes as the US tries to balance its oil interests and its ties to Rodríguez with growing pressure for a real democratic transition, including the question of whether members of the former regime could face prosecution if Machado wins.
