Venezuela government to launch formal talks with opposition members

Venezuela's interim government says it will start holding formal talks with some members of the opposition from 1 August. The announcement comes just over six months after US troops seized Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader at the time, in a dawn raid on the capital, Caracas, and took him to New York to face drug-trafficking charges. Former Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez, a Maduro loyalist, has been in power since then with the backing of the Trump administration, much to the frustration of the opposition, which had hoped Maduro's ouster would be followed by a change of government. An opposition statement said the talks would lay down "a route map towards democracy". The plan for formal talks was announced almost simultaneously by a group of opposition politicians on the one hand, and Jorge Rodríguez, who heads the government-controlled National Assembly, on the other. Jorge Rodríguez, who is the brother of interim president Delcy Rodríguez, cited the devastation created by the recent twin earthquakes which struck the north of Venezuela on 24 June as the reason behind the talks.At least 4,734 people are already confirmed to have died but the death toll keeps on rising as more bodies are found beneath the rubble. "Only through unity can we move forward with reconstruction and maintain peace," Jorge Rodríguez's brief statement said.