April 2 (UPI) -- The Trump administration has lifted sanctions on Venezuela's interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, in the latest sign of warming relations between Washington and Caracas after the U.S. military ousted Venezuela's former authoritarian leader, Nicolas Maduro.
The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control announced in a post on its website Wednesday that Rodriguez, 56, had been removed from its Specially Designated Nationals list, unfreezing any assets that may have been under her name in the United States while allowing her to conduct business in the United States and with U.S. persons.
Rodriguez, Venezuelan first lady Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro and two other close associates of the former president were blacklisted by the United States in September 2018, amid the first Trump administration's effort to remove Maduro following his re-election that year in what was widely deemed an illegitimate contest.
"We welcome President Donald Trump's decision as a step toward normalizing and strengthening relations between our countries," Rodriguez said in a statement on Telegram.
"We trust that this progress will make it possible to lift the sanctions currently in place against our country, and to build and guarantee an effective bilateral cooperation agenda for the benefit of our peoples.
