US urges Venezuela to follow phased plan for democratic transition
The United States has urged Venezuela to continue on a phased plan of economic recovery and political reconciliation before embarking on democratic elections, following a meeting between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Venezuelan Foreign Minister Oliver Blanco.
Rubio and Blanco discussed the country’s political future on Monday, with the State Department stating that Washington had reaffirmed President Donald Trump’s three-phase plan for Venezuela: stabilization, economic recovery and political reconciliation, and democratic transition.
The meeting comes nearly a year after US forces abducted former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from Caracas and brought him to the US to face drug trafficking and other charges.
Neither Rubio nor Blanco spoke to the media after the meeting, but the State Department issued a readout of the discussions.
Opposition leader returns
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado returned to her country last week, thanking US President Donald Trump and Rubio for their support.
Machado, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who gifted her medal to Trump in 2025, said she had come to organise a movement in preparation for Venezuelan elections.
Rubio has set out a sequence of events aimed at moving toward a democratic transition that makes clear the holding of presidential elections in 2027
Oil deal and scepticism
Machado is balancing an election campaign with a Trump administration that has sought to extract oil from Venezuela by striking deals with the government of interim President Delcy Rodriguez.
In September, the Trump administration said it had struck a deal with Venezuela that would give Washington a stake in about one-fifth of the country’s oil resources.
The US said it was creating a joint venture with North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), owned by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt.
Under the deal, Caracas is giving the company 100-year rights over 17 oilfields with proven reserves of 65 billion barrels.
The Pentagon will have a 35 percent stake in NABEP, and the US will be guaranteed the right to buy 20 percent of its oil output at cost.
Shortly before Machado’s statements, Rodriguez assured the nation that elections would be held in Venezuela 'with the world as witness', but did not specify a date.
This agreement does not reflect the levels of transparency that Venezuelan society wants
When asked about a possible meeting with Rodriguez, Machado said she had not received any message from the interim president or from Washington.
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