Reported by NORA GÁMEZ TORRES and ANTONIO DELGADO

The Biden administration had agreed to lift sanctions on Venezuela and promised the return of normal relations if the opposition could participate in competitive presidential elections, according to a deal secretly signed in Qatar last year that leader Nicolas Maduro made public on social media.

Maduro published the document Wednesday, shortly before Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez won the Venezuelan presidential elections Sunday, citing the vote tallies presented by the opposition. The government-controlled electoral council said Maduro won, providing what were widely seen as fraudulent numbers. 

The Qatar document shows the Biden administration struck a deal with Maduro to lift sanctions on the country’s oil, banking and gold sectors if he committed to elections and allow the opposition to compete. And it added a significant incentive to Maduro: the lifting of most sanctions after the winner took office.

At that point, the U.S. government would restore full diplomatic relations and dismantle the sanctions regime against the country, the document says. This would include unblocking all Venezuelan government assets in the United States and lifting sanctions, including individual ones imposed under an executive order.

Early on, Biden’s team turned the page from the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign policy and signaled it was willing to lift sanctions if Maduro allowed “free and fair elections.” In 2022, after intense lobbying, it authorized Chevron to expand its oil operations in the projects the company already had in Venezuela.

The Qatar agreement — a memorandum of understanding dated Sept 29, 2023, whose details had not been previously disclosed — shows how far the administration was willing to go and how instrumental its efforts were in getting Maduro to sign an electoral agreement with the opposition in Barbados last year.

Read full report: https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article290702924.html