The United States expelled two Venezuelan diplomats on Monday in a sign that diplomatic tensions increased between the two countries.
In response to a question on whether the U.S. will expel the two Venezuelan officials, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, “We are.”
“In response to the Venezuelan Government’s actions against two of our personnel, we did inform the Venezuelan Government on March 9 ... that we had declared two of their second secretaries persona non grata,” she said, according to a transcript of a press conference.
The two were identified as Orlando Jose Montanez Olivares and Consular Officer Victor Camacaro Mata, who Nuland said, “have now departed the country.”
Last week, Venezuelan officials announced the expulsion of two U.S. Embassy officials, alleging they were spying and planning to destabilize the nation. The move coincided with the death of President Hugo Chavez, who ruled the country for 14 years, which left U.S.-Venezuelan relations at a crossroads.
“You’ll also recall that in the day or days that followed, there was some pretty heated rhetoric coming in our direction,” she said. “I think I called it at one point a page from the old ‘Chavista’ playbook that we were hoping was going to change. So clearly, when you have an incident that you consider unjust, and then you need to take reciprocal action and make your point clear.”
Camacaro worked in the Venezuelan Consulate in New York, while Montanez worked at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, Nuland said.
Nuland said the U.S. hopes “for better relations with Venezuela. There is work that we would like to do together, particularly in the areas of counterterrorism, counternarcotics, economics and energy relations, but it’s going to take a change of tone from Caracas.”
Nicolas Maduro, the interim president, and other officials last week suggested that Chavez might have been poisoned, without elaborating.
It was reported last week that Chavez, who battled an unnamed type of cancer for several years, suffered from a massive heart attack.
