The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden urged socialist Venezuela on Tuesday to engage with Washington “in good faith,” confirming plans to resume negotiations towards normal diplomatic relations.
Administration officials also encouraged dictator Nicolás Maduro to ensure that a sham presidential election on July 28, featuring only hand-picked rivals to Maduro, be “competitive and inclusive.”
Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro announced on Monday that he had agreed to resume talks with the United States following two months of requests from the Biden administration. The new discussions, according to Maduro, were slated to begin on Wednesday.
“We of course welcome dialogue in good faith and we support the Venezuelan people’s desire for competitive and inclusive elections on July 28th, and we are clear-eyed that democratic change will not be easy and certainly requires a serious commitment,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said during a press briefing on Tuesday.
Asked if the Maduro regime can expect sanctions relief from the United States ahead of the sham election — something that the Biden administration offered in October as part of a now-failed attempt to have Venezuela hold a “free and fair election” — Patel stated that he is “not going to try and get into the head” of Maduro, stressing that the Biden administration believes that the implementation of the Barbados agreement “is the best path to restore democracy that Venezuelans deserve.”
The “Barbados agreement” is a deal Maduro agreed to, alongside the Venezuelan establishment “opposition” and the United States, last year that required him to take unspecified measures towards the holding of free and fair presidential elections in 2024 in exchange for America lifting sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry.
The sanctions relief package temporarily restored the Maduro regime’s main source of revenue by allowing the state-owned PDVSA oil company to freely sell Venezuelan oil in U.S. and international markets. The Maduro regime repeatedly violated the agreed-upon terms. Maduro, in turn, accused the United States of not adhering to its end of the deal as it did not lift all existing sanctions on Venezuela.
“It’s also the best path to improve economic and humanitarian conditions and address the migration crisis, so this is something that we’ll continue to focus on,” Patel said. “We will engage in dialogue with a broad range of Venezuelan actors.”
Venezuela is slated to hold a sham presidential election on July 28 in which Maduro is seeking to obtain a third six-year term. His current term followed a similar sham election held in May 2018 where only handpicked rivals were allowed to run against the socialist dictator. Maduro then, as he did this year, banned legitimate opposition leaders from running. During the rule of Maduro’s predecessor, late dictator Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s ruling United Socialist Party (PSUV) was able to eliminate all term limits for elected officials, effectively allowing Maduro and any other Venezuelan official to run for reelection as many times as they want.
Much like the 2018 election, Maduro will “compete” against handpicked rivals, with the sole exception being 74-year-old Edmundo González, a lesser-known diplomat and the only opposition candidate that the nation’s regime-controlled electoral authorities allowed to appear on the ballot.
The July 28 sham election is the result of the “Caracas agreements,” a sham document issued by the Maduro regime’s lawmakers and regime-affiliated individuals earlier this year. The document was drafted by the ruling socialists to “replace” the Barbados agreement.
The new round of negotiations between the United States and Venezuela, which Maduro claimed are slated to begin on Wednesday, will see the socialist dictator send a delegation led by his top negotiator Jorge Rodríguez, who currently serves as the head of the Venezuelan National Assembly.
In 2023, Rodríguez held a private meeting in Doha, Qatar, with President Biden’s former top Latin America adviser Juan González. The meeting reportedly served to “establish communication channels” between the Biden administration and the Maduro regime.
Maduro claimed on Monday evening that his decision to restart talks with the United States is so that “the Qatar agreements are fulfilled, that they are public dialogues and that it is not hidden,” but did not provide further explanation.
“They [the Biden administration] know who is going to win, and I am going to make it easy for them. I am a man of dialogue, and I want Venezuela, its democracy, its people to be respected through dialogue,” Maduro said. “I want to overcome this conflict of brutal and sterile confrontation with them, with the north, it is up to them to comply.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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