The new head of the United States diplomatic mission for Venezuela Laura Dogu (C) walking upon arrival to Maiquetia International Airport, La Guaira state, Venezuela on January 31, 2025. (Photo by Handout / US Embassy / Venezuela Affairs Unit / AFP)
Caracas: The new head of the US diplomatic mission to Venezuela arrived in the country on Saturday as relations gradually resume after the ouster of Nicolas Maduro in a US military raid.
The plane from Bogota carrying the new US charge d'affaires Laura Dogu landed at the airport serving Caracas around 3pm local time (1900 GMT), a diplomatic source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Dogu, a former ambassador to Nicaragua and Honduras, was named to the position last week. A charge d'affaires is the head of a diplomatic mission in the absence of a full ambassador.
The United States has already sent a mission to assess the embassy, which has been largely unoccupied for the past six years.
It was shuttered in 2019 shortly after Washington and other major powers declared Maduro to be illegitimate following a flawed election. Maduro then severed diplomatic relations with Washington.
US forces attacked Venezuela on January 3, capturing Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores and taking them to New York for trial on US-issued drug trafficking charges.
President Donald Trump says he is now running Venezuela and has allowed Maduro's vice president Delcy Rodriguez to be interim leader so long as she does what he wants -in particular granting the United States access to Venezuela's vast oil reserves.
Since 2019, the US embassy has been largely deserted other than a few local employees, although since last year, a charge d'affaires for Venezuela , John McNamara -- Dogu's predecessor -has been based in neighboring Colombia.
McNamara travelled with other US diplomats to Caracas days after Maduro's ouster to assess "a potential phased resumption of operations" at the embassy.
Trump has said he was working "really well" with Rodriguez, and a US official has said Rodriguez would visit the United States soon.
But Trump has also warned Rodriguez of a fate possibly worse than Maduro's if she fails to heed US demands on policy reforms and access to oil -of which Venezuela has more proven reserves than any country on Earth.
