Washington.- The President of the United States, Donald Trump, and the Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, María Corina Machado, will have lunch this Thursday at the White House to discuss the situation in Venezuela following the capture of Nicolás Maduro.
According to the official schedule of the US president, the lunch will be held at 12:30 Washington time (17:30 GMT) in a private dining room of the White House and will take place behind closed doors, with no access for the press.
The meeting, the first between the two, will take place less than two weeks after the United States deposed Maduro during an attack in Venezuela on January 3 in which the Chavista leader and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured and transferred to New York to be tried for drug trafficking.
So far, Trump has excluded Machado and the Venezuelan opposition from the transition process in Venezuela, where the vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, assumed power as acting president with Washington’s endorsement.
Machado has publicly stated his desire to share the Nobel Peace Prize with Trump, who aspires to obtain that award, as an attempt to bring positions closer to the president, although the Nobel Committee has warned that the prize is non-transferable.
The meeting will be held one day after Trump and Delcy Rodríguez had a phone conversation in which they discussed issues related to oil, minerals, trade, and security.
The Republican affirmed that Rodriguez is a “fantastic person” and that “tremendous progress” is being made to stabilize Venezuela.
According to the acting president, the call was “long, productive and courteous”, and took place “in a framework of mutual respect”.
Trump maintains that the United States maintains a guardianship over the Venezuelan government and has announced agreements to receive millions of barrels of Venezuelan crude oil.
This Wednesday, Delcy Rodríguez reported that in recent days 406 political prisoners have been released in the country and that the process of release “remains open”.
