Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday said elections in Venezuela would “ideally” be held next year, but said the country still must take several critical steps to set the right conditions for a vote.
In an interview with The New York Times at the White House, Mr. Rubio said the United States was focused on supporting Venezuela’s return to democracy and voiced support for closer military cooperation between the two countries.
At the same time, Mr. Rubio, who is steering much of Venezuela’s finances and government from Washington, declined to guarantee elections would be held before President Trump left office.
“I think people will be happy the way this turns out and the trajectory that it’s on,” Mr. Rubio said, referring to the plan for democratic elections in the country. After Venezuela’s last presidential election in 2024, the authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner, despite widespread evidence that his opponent got more votes.
Before the next elections can be held, Mr. Rubio said, Venezuela needs a new Supreme Court and a new electoral council, and should make progress on its debt restructuring and reform its security forces.
He said he expected U.S.-sponsored talks between the Venezuelan government and a segment of the opposition to result in the reform of the country’s Supreme Court by the middle of December.
He also said negotiators are expected to meet next week to discuss appointing new members of the electoral council.
Mr. Rubio has emphasized that he wants to see changes to Venezuela’s notoriously repressive and corrupt security forces and progress on the restructuring of its national debt, though he cautioned that these issues may not be fully solved before the elections.
“You got to have the buy-in of the security forces in any country in the world, because that’s what you’re going to need to govern,” he said.
Several senior Venezuelan military officers have told The Times earlier this year that they would not accept a government led by María Corina Machado, the most popular opposition leader.
Mr. Rubio also said that Venezuela would struggle to revive its economy without resolving its pile of defaulted debt, which is believed to amount to more than $200 billion.
Restructuring the debt “is the current work of the interim authorities, but it may very well extend into an elected authority,” Mr. Rubio said. “It’s an enormous problem that Venezuela faces, which I think all sectors of society should be supporting in resolving, because it hangs like a cloud over impeding investment.”
A U.S. official said that debt restructuring was an important step for removing sweeping American economic sanctions on Venezuela.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations, said part of the reason the Trump administration has maintained legal restrictions on doing business in Venezuela despite allying with its government is to prevent creditors from impounding the nation’s assets.
The person added that resolving the debt issue is an important precondition for the elections, because it would be politically challenging for the Trump administration to maintain sanctions on a democratically elected government.
The Times reported on Tuesday that United States was in talks with Venezuelan officials to secure a regular presence of American troops in the country. Mr. Rubio said the topic had not been discussed in detail between the two governments.
“We would like to have at some point a presence agreement with them, but largely from a legal standpoint, to make sure that our troops there have legal protections and they’re operating jointly with them,” he said. “But we would have to get into deeper conversation with them over time as to what kind of enduring cooperation” the two countries may have.
Mr. Rubio declined to comment on a the Times report that U.S. and Venezuelan armed forces on Friday jointly attacked Colombian guerrillas sheltering on Venezuelan territory, the first operation of its kind by the longtime adversaries.
But he said he welcomed greater military cooperation between the United States and Venezuela.
“Having a relationship with the U.S. security forces — being the armed forces, the drug enforcement agency — is far preferable than them having the same relationship with foreign actors, with malign interests,” Mr. Rubio said, referring to the Venezuelan government.
He added: “We can help the Venezuelan forces not just increase their professionalism but their capabilities to target things that are also threats to their country.”
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