Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela's interim president will soon visit the United States, a senior US official has said, further signalling President Donald Trump's willingness to embrace the oil-rich country's new leader.
She would be the first sitting Venezuelan president to visit the United States in more than a quarter century — aside from presidents attending United Nations meetings in New York.
The invitation reflects a head-snapping shift in relations between Washington and Caracas since US Delta Force operatives attacked Caracas, abducted President Nicolas Maduro and the first lady and spirited him to a US jail to face narco-trafficking charges.
Rodriguez was a former vice president and long-time insider in Venezuela government, before changing tack as interim president.
She is still the subject of US sanctions, including an asset freeze.
But with a flotilla of US warships still amassed off the Venezuelan coast, she has allowed the United States to broker the sale of Venezuelan oil, facilitated foreign investment and released dozens of political prisoners.
A senior White House official said Rodriguez would visit soon, but no date has been set.
The last bilateral visit by a sitting Venezuelan president came in the 1990s — before populist leader Hugo Chavez took power.
Since then, successive Venezuelan governments have made a point of thumbing their nose at Washington and building close ties with US foes in China, Cuba, Iran and Russia.
Venezuelan oil
The US trip, which has yet to be confirmed by Venezuelan authorities, could pose problems for Rodriguez inside the government — where some hardliners still detest what they see as Washington's hemispheric imperialism.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez remain powerful forces in the country, and analysts say their support for Rodriguez is not a given.
Trump has so far appeared happy to allow Rodriguez and much of the government to remain in power, so long as the United States has access to Venezuelan oil — the largest proven reserves in the world.
Trump hosted Venezuela's exiled opposition figure and Nobel peace laureate Maria Corina Machado at the White House earlier this month.
After initially dismissing Machado and her ability to control the country's powerful armed forces and intelligence services, he said on Tuesday he would "love" to have her "involved in some way."
Analysts say Trump's embrace of Rodriguez and avoidance of wholesale government change can be explained by an unwillingness to repeat mistakes made in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
"Those kinds of intervention operations — and the deployment of troops for stabilisation — have always ended very badly," said Benigno Alarcon, a politics expert at the Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas.
Venezuela oil exports reach 7.8 million barrels
Meanwhile, the volume of Venezuelan oil exported under a flagship $2 billion supply deal with the US reached about 7.8 million barrels on Wednesday, vessel-tracking data and PDVSA documents showed, highlighting slow progress that has prevented the state oil company from fully reversing recent output cuts.
Caracas and Washington earlier this month agreed a deal to sell up to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan crude stored in tanks and aboard vessels.
Trading houses Vitol and Trafigura obtained the first US licenses to load and export cargoes from the OPEC country.
But the additional supply has yet to significantly ease PDVSA's swollen inventories or quickly reverse crude production cuts imposed in early January.
