WASHINGTON: US Central Intelligence Agency head John Ratcliffe travelled to Venezuela on Thursday and met leader Delcy Rodriguez, a US administration official said, in the highest-level American visit since the fall of Nicolas Maduro.

President Donald Trump sent the spy chief to Caracas for a meeting that lasted approximately two hours, US sources said, less than two weeks after Maduro and his wife were seized in a military operation.

“At President Trump’s direction, (CIA) Director Ratcliffe travelled to Venezuela to meet interim president Delcy Rodriguez to deliver the message that the United States looks forward to an improved working relationship,” the Trump administration official said.

The official added that Ratcliffe and Rodriguez “discussed potential opportunities for economic collaboration and that Venezuela can no longer be a safe haven for America’s adversaries, especially narco traffickers”.

The visit came a day after Trump spoke to Rodriguez for the first time and on the same day that Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado presented Trump with her Nobel Peace prize at the White House.

Trump has so far backed Rodriguez, Maduro’s former vice president and a former vocal ally of the ousted leader, to stay in charge so long as Venezuelan oil keeps flowing.

Ratcliffe sits at Trump’s cabinet meetings and is the most senior official to travel to Venezuela since the United States toppled leftist Maduro two weeks ago.

US sources billed the CIA chief’s visit as a “trust-building measure” that paved the way for continued communication between Washington and Caracas.

The visit was coordinated between the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, they added.

‘Receiving orders’

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado alleged on Friday that Venezuela’s interim leader was receiving “orders”, apparently suggesting they were coming from the United States.

“She is not in an agreement of her own free will” and is rather “following orders”, Machado said during an event in Washington.

First post-Maduro flight

The first US deportation flight to Venezuela since the ouster of Nicolas Maduro landed in Caracas on Friday.

The flight from Phoenix, Arizona, which was carrying 231 Venezuelans, landed at Maiquetia international airport, two weeks after Maduro’s capture by US forces.

For months after the standoff began with the United States last year, Venezuela continued to take back undocumented migrants until Washington suspended them last month on the eve of the attacks.

The resumption of the returns is seen as yet another sign of a post-Maduro thaw in relations between Washington and Caracas.

Trump has boasted that Washington now effectively runs the Caribbean country, in conjunction with Maduro’s former deputy Delcy Rodriguez, now acting president.