Tensions with U.S. Have Eased, Head of Venezuelan Congress Says Latin American Herald Tribune June 29, 2015
CARACAS – The speaker of Venezuela’s National Assembly said Monday that tensions with the United States have eased following the talks between Presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Maduro during April’s Summit of the Americas in Panama.
“After that meeting in Panama, tensions have eased considerably – it used to be very common to see U.S. officials speaking out against Venezuela,” Diosdado Cabello said in an interview on Globovision.
He said the tense relations between the two countries have eased, but that in Venezuela “we’ve stayed more on the defensive.”
“We only answer their attacks and finger-pointing,” he said.
Cabello has been a Maduro envoy sent to meet with State Department Counselor Thomas Shannon for talks aimed at getting relations between the two countries back on track.
The speaker did not provide, however, many details about those meetings, but said they would continue.
“Whatever meetings are necessary, we will attend,” he said, adding that he had nothing against traveling to U.S. territory if necessary.
According to reports by the U.S. press, Cabello is being investigated in the United States for ties with drug trafficking.
His last meeting with Shannon was on June 3 in Haiti, which he attended together with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez.
In those meetings, Venezuela and the United States sought to smooth out the bad feelings that arose last March when President Obama said in an official document that the situation in the Andean nation posed a threat to U.S. national security.
In that same text he said that a group of Venezuelan officials were to be sanctioned for alleged human-rights violations.
Diplomatic relations between Venezuela and the United States have been minimal because since 2010, neither country has had an ambassador in the other.
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