The White House confirmed this Friday that President Donald Trump will meet with the interim president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, next week in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, as reported by the AP agency.
The announcement was made by the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, during a call with journalists. Waltz specified that the meeting will take place in a "pull-aside" format, meaning it will be a shorter and more informal exchange than a formal bilateral meeting, without seated delegations, a specific agenda, or a joint appearance.
It will be the first face-to-face meeting between both leaders and, according to journalist David Alandete, "the clearest sign yet of the relationship that Washington has built with the head of the Venezuelan regime since the capture of Nicolás Maduro."
Trump himself had anticipated the possibility of the meeting days earlier, aboard Air Force One, when he responded with a brief "maybe yes, maybe yes" when asked by the journalists accompanying him.
The meeting comes after a rapid diplomatic rapprochement between Washington and Caracas that began on January 3, 2026, when U.S. forces captured Maduro in Caracas during Operation "Absolute Resolution" and transported him to the United States to face drug trafficking charges.
After that operation, Rodríguez —who was vice president— assumed the role of acting president, and the Trump administration recognized the new Venezuelan government. Both leaders held their first phone conversation on January 14, during which Trump referred to Rodríguez as a "fantastic person," while she described the exchange as "long, productive, and courteous."
Since then, normalization has progressed at an accelerated pace. On April 1st, the United States removed Rodríguez from the OFAC sanctions list, on which she had been listed since September 2018.
At the end of August, Trump announced a historic oil agreement: the private company North American Blue Energy Partners secured rights to 17 Venezuelan fields with over 65 billion barrels of proven reserves, with a 35% stake from the U.S. Department of War in the company.
On September 16, Trump removed Venezuela from the list of countries that fail to meet anti-drug commitments, another gesture of détente that adds to the agenda for next week in New York.
The approach is not without its criticisms. Opposition leader María Corina Machado questioned the legitimacy of the oil agreement with a direct warning: "The wealth of our land does not belong to an illegitimate regime."
During the high-level week of the General Assembly, taking place from September 22 to 26, Trump is also scheduled to meet with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham—his first meeting since Burnham took office in July—and with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, in addition to leaders from the Gulf Cooperation Council.
The meeting with Rodríguez will be the first between a U.S. president and a Venezuelan leader in more than eleven years, since the brief exchange between Barack Obama and Nicolás Maduro at the 2015 Summit of the Americas in Panama.
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