US welcomes rare Venezuela government-opposition meeting on transition

Washington moved quickly to welcome a rare public meeting in Caracas between Jorge Rodriguez, Venezuela’s National Assembly president, and Dinorah Figuera, a former opposition lawmaker now linked to the Venezuelan Interim Government. The June 18 contact was the first open rapprochement between the ruling camp and opposition figures in nearly three years, and it came with a narrow but politically loaded agenda: democratic transition, institutional rebuilding and a possible reset in a country where state power has been tightly concentrated for years.

Figuera’s return gave the meeting added weight. She came back to Caracas after eight years in exile, while Rodriguez, who heads the legislature, is the brother of Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela’s acting president. The National Assembly issued only a brief note saying the talks centered on a platform to strengthen democracy and consolidate peace, a sparse statement that suggested this was an opening conversation rather than a negotiated breakthrough.

The U.S. State Department said the agenda included rebuilding Venezuela’s democratic institutions, strengthening the National Electoral Council, restoring durable guarantees for political participation and securing civic freedoms for open political discourse. That language reflects what Washington is trying to unlock: not a symbolic handshake, but conditions that could make future elections credible enough to matter. Any meaningful opening would also create room for the United States to calibrate its broader pressure on Caracas, while easing some of the migration and regional instability that have shadowed Venezuela’s collapse.

The meeting sits in the shadow of the Barbados Agreement signed in October 2023 between Nicolás Maduro’s government and the opposition Unitary Platform. That deal was supposed to produce electoral guarantees for the 2024 presidential race, and United Nations election experts later said their mission in Venezuela operated within its framework. The latest contact suggests the architecture of dialogue has not disappeared, even if it has been battered by mistrust, repression and repeated dead ends.

Still, the odds of a real reopening remain uncertain. The State Department said it supports dialogue led by the 2015 National Assembly, which it calls the last internationally recognized democratically elected entity in Venezuela, and the Interim Government. It also said the June 18 meeting was a first step in a thoughtful process toward a free and open Venezuelan society, with continued conversations in Caracas expected in the coming weeks. Whether that process becomes a transition or just another round of choreography will depend on whether the two sides move beyond statements and into enforceable changes on elections, institutions and political rights.