US talks with hardline Venezuelan minister Cabello said to have begun months before raid

NEW YORK/MIAMI/WASHINGTON - Trump administration officials had been in discussions with Venezuela's hardline interior minister Diosdado Cabello months before the

US operation to seize President Nicolas Maduro

, and have been in communication with him since then, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The officials warned Mr Cabello, 62, against using the security services or militant ruling-party supporters he oversees to target the country's opposition, four sources said.

That security apparatus, which includes the intelligence services, police and the armed forces, remains largely intact after the Jan 3 US raid.

Mr Cabello is named in the same US drug-trafficking indictment that the Trump administration used as justification to arrest Maduro, but was not taken as part of the operation.

The communication with Mr Cabello, which has also touched on sanctions the US has imposed on him and the indictment he faces, dates back to the early days of the current Trump administration and continued in the weeks just prior to the US ouster of Maduro, two sources familiar with the discussions said.

The administration has also been in touch with Mr Cabello since Maduro's ouster, four of the people said.

The communications, which have not been previously reported, are critical to the Trump administration's efforts to control the situation inside Venezuela.

If Mr Cabello decides to unleash the forces that he controls, it could foment the kind of chaos that US President Donald Trump wants to avoid and threaten interim Venezuelan president Delcy Rodriguez's grip on power, according to a source briefed on US concerns.

It is not clear if the Trump administration's discussions with Mr Cabello extended to questions about the future governance of Venezuela.

Also unclear is whether Mr Cabello has heeded the US warnings.

He has publicly pledged unity with Ms Rodriguez, whom Mr Trump has so far praised.

While Ms Rodriguez has been seen by the US as the linchpin for Mr Trump's strategy for post-Maduro Venezuela, Mr Cabello is widely believed to have the power to keep those plans on track or upend them.

The Venezuelan minister has been in contact with the Trump administration both directly and via intermediaries, one person familiar with the conversations said.

All of the sources were granted anonymity to speak freely about sensitive internal government communications with Mr Cabello.

The White House and the government of Venezuela did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Cabello has been Maduro loyalist

Mr Cabello has long been seen as Venezuela's second most powerful figure.

A close aide of late former president Hugo Chavez, Maduro's mentor, he went on to become a long-time Maduro loyalist, feared as his main enforcer of repression.

Ms Rodriguez and Mr Cabello have both operated at the heart of the government, legislature and ruling socialist party for years, but have never been considered close allies of each other.

A former military officer, Mr Cabello has exerted influence over the country's military and civilian counterintelligence agencies, which conduct widespread domestic espionage.

He has also been closely associated with pro-government militias, notably the colectivos, groups of motorcycle-riding armed civilians who have been deployed to attack protesters.

Mr Cabello is one of a handful of Maduro loyalists Washington has relied on as temporary rulers to maintain stability while it accesses the OPEC nation's oil reserves during an unspecified transition period.

But US officials are concerned that Mr Cabello – given his record of repression and a history of rivalry with Ms Rodriguez – could play the spoiler, according to a source briefed on the administration's thinking.

Ms Rodriguez has been working to consolidate her own power, installing loyalists in key positions to protect herself from internal threats

while meeting US demands to boost oil production

, Reuters interviews with sources in Venezuela have shown.

Mr Elliott Abrams, who served as Mr Trump's special representative on Venezuela in his first term, said many Venezuelans would expect Mr Cabello to be removed at some point if a democratic transition is to advance.

"If and when he goes, Venezuelans will know that the regime has really begun to change," said Mr Abrams, now at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

US sanctions and indictment

Mr Cabello has long been under US sanctions for alleged drug trafficking.

In 2020, the US issued a US$10 million (S$12.9 million) bounty for Mr Cabello and indicted him as a key figure in the Cartel de los Soles, a group the US has said is a Venezuelan drug-trafficking network led by members of the country's government.

The US has since raised the award to US$25 million. Mr Cabello has publicly denied any links to drug trafficking.

In the hours after Maduro’s ouster, some analysts and politicians in Washington questioned why the US did not also grab Mr Cabello – listed second in the Department of Justice indictment of Maduro.

“I know that just Diosdado is probably worse than Maduro and worse than Delcy,” Republican US Representative Maria Elvira Salazar said in an interview with CBS's Face the Nation on Jan 11.

In the days following, Mr Cabello denounced American intervention in the country, saying in a speech that “Venezuela will not surrender”.

But media reports of residents being searched at checkpoints – sometimes by uniformed members of the security forces and sometimes by people in plain clothes – have become less frequent in recent days.

And both Mr Trump and the Venezuelan government have said many detainees who are considered by the opposition and rights groups to be political prisoners will be released.

The government has said that Mr Cabello, in his role as interior minister, is overseeing that effort.

Rights groups say the liberations are proceeding extremely slowly and hundreds remain unjustly detained. REUTERS