“The necessary preparations” are already underway to reopen the American embassy in Caracas following the capture of deposed socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, the U.S. State Department reportedly confirmed Monday to Spanish news agency EFE.
“As President Trump said, we are making the necessary preparations to allow reopening in the event that the president makes that decision,” an unnamed U.S. State Department Spokesperson reportedly told EFE.
Reuters cited similar remarks issued to the outlet by an unnamed senior State Department official, and reported that the United States is undergoing preparations to reopen the embassy should President Donald Trump decide to do it.
We’re thinking about it. We’ve been asked to do it,” President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force Once on Sunday when asked if the U.S. is going to reopen its embassy in Caracas.
Bloomberg, citing “people familiar with the planning, who asked not to be identified without permission to speak publicly,” reported on Monday that the current work is “preliminary,” with deliberations about reopening are at an early stage, and that no decision has yet been made.
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Prior to the arrival of the Venezuelan socialist regime to power in 1999, the United States had a diplomatic presence and friendly relations with the South American nation, with an embassy located in Baruta, one of the municipalities that make up the Metropolitan District of Caracas.
Nicolás Maduro unilaterally cut the diplomatic ties with the United States in early 2019 in response to the Trump administration recognizing interim President Juan Guaidó as the legitimate government of Venezuela after Maduro clung to power in 2018 by holding a sham election in which only handpicked rivals were allowed to “compete” against him.
All remaining U.S. embassy personnel left the country by March 2019 at a time when the situation in Venezuela — already complicated by the political crisis that ensured at the time — significantly deteriorated further following a days-long nationwide blackout.
Since then, all consular services once provided by the shut down embassy in Caracas have been handled the Venezuela Affairs Unit (VAU) at the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, Colombia.
“We can do that by telephone, but there’s nothing that replaces the building and rebuilding of the relationships you had on the ground, not just in Caracas, but in the rest of the country,” Todd Robinson, a retired career foreign service officer who led the U.S. embassy in Caracas, told Bloomberg.
“It would be a huge advantage to get the embassy open again,” he continued.
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