Caracas (theassemblymedia.com) — Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez on Wednesday reaffirmed her country’s commitment to peace, dialogue, national reconciliation, and an electoral process determined by the people in an address to the 81st session of the UN General Assembly in New York.
“There will be elections in Venezuela. The people of Venezuela, with their ancestral wisdom, will determine the right moment and their institutions will be ready to guarantee an inclusive and transparent process,” Rodríguez said at the UN.
The acting president added that building the pathway for elections includes that the country is “free from economic restrictions of any kind to guarantee the right to development.” The statement makes reference to the US-led unilateral coercive measures, commonly known as sanctions, that have weighed on Venezuela’s economy since 2017 blocking the oil industry.
“We have begun a political dialogue with sectors of the opposition to pave the way for an electoral process in which all parties can compete on equal terms,” Rodríguez added. She also reaffirmed her administration’s commitment to national reconciliation and eliminating extremist elements within the political sphere.
“I do not promise you an easy way forward,” Rodríguez said, addressing Venezuelans listening at home, but guaranteed a “reborn” process for the country.
In August, Caracas opened talks with a faction of the opposition represented by members of the opposition-majority National Assembly elected in 2015, whose term ran through 2020. In two rounds of talks, the delegations have agreed to advance judicial reform, political and human rights, electoral guarantees, freedom of expression, and the recovery of 31 tons of gold held by the Bank of England since 2019. At the time, the United Kingdom backed Washington’s decision to recognize former opposition lawmaker Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s self-proclaimed “interim president.”
Venezuela held presidential elections in July 2024, in which Nicolás Maduro was reelected for a third term. As it had after the May 2018 election, Washington rejected the result and intensified its efforts to remove Maduro’s government, including an assasination attempt, political unrest, a failed mercenary invasion and economic sanctions.
From 2017 to 2020, the Trump administration imposed financial sanctions, an embargo, and secondary sanctions on the state oil company PDVSA. The administration also seized or transferred control of Venezuelan assets abroad, including bank accounts, gold deposits, and CITGO—PDVSA’s US-based subsidiary—to the Guaidó-led sector. These measures exacerbated an economic crisis triggered by the 2014 oil price crash and the 2015 Obama decree that declared Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” which created barriers for international investment.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) described Venezuela’s economic collapse under US sanctions as “the largest outside of wartime since 1950.”
In August 2025, Washington launched a major military buildup in the Caribbean Sea near Venezuela, citing counternarcotics operations. In December, the US Navy began seizing oil tankers traveling to and from Venezuelan ports. On January 3, the United States carried out airstrikes in and around Caracas and abducted President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, an elected member of the National Assembly.
Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, assumed power under a Supreme Court ruling ratified by parliament. After Washington threatened further military attacks, Rodríguez began negotiations with the Trump administration. Since then, Washington has taken control of Venezuela’s oil exports, blocked shipments to Cuba, China, Russia, and Iran, and directed the resulting revenues into a US-controlled bank account. Caracas now depends on US authorization to access those funds.
In her address to the UN on Wednesday, Acting President Delcy Rodríguez reaffirmed her government’s decision to resolve differences through dialogue and advance an agenda of cooperation for mutual benefit with the Trump administration.
In early September, the two governments signed an oil deal covering 17 Venezuelan oil fields that will give the US access to an estimated 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. The agreement has a 25-year timeframe to develop infrastructure through private investment but the concession stretches for 100 years, according to US officials. Washington has recently relaxed some sanctions on the oil, gas, mining and banking sectors.
On Tuesday, Rodríguez met with President Trump at New York’s Lotte Palace Hotel to discuss debt restructuring and closer cooperation. Earlier that day, Trump addressed the UN General Assembly, touting the US military assault and its seizure of control over Venezuela’s oil resources as a warning to other nations that defy Washington’s interests.