Eagle Intelligence Reports
The first direct flight between the United States and Venezuela in seven years was set to take off Thursday, a new sign of a thaw after Washington deposed leftist leader Nicolas Maduro.
The American Airlines flight is scheduled to take off at 10:16 am (1416 GMT) from Miami en route to Caracas, where the United States has resumed diplomatic relations after years of tension.
To mark the occasion, representatives of the US government, the City of Miami, and the Venezuelan ambassador to Washington, Felix Plasencia, will greet passengers before the flight departs Gate D55.
Some 1.2 million Venezuelans live in the United States, and the thaw is expected to increase the US business presence in the South American nation, which has the world’s largest proven gas reserves.
But President Donald Trump has also been moving aggressively to remove Venezuelans from the United States, terminating a program that shielded migrants from deportation back to the crime-ridden nation.
US forces on January 3 carried out a deadly raid in Caracas, snatching longtime US nemesis Maduro and flying him and his wife to New York to face charges of drug trafficking, which they deny.
Maduro was replaced by his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, who has largely cooperated with the United States despite her ideological background.
Trump has voiced satisfaction with her policies toward US companies and has tried to enforce compliance by threatening violence. Venezuela has moved to open the oil and mining sectors to the private sector.
Trump in turn has started an easing of sanctions on Venezuela, with measures imposed personally on Rodriguez dropped.
The new flight comes despite trouble in the aviation industry, which has been hit hard by a sharp rise in oil prices after the United States and Israel attacked Iran. AFP