US talks with hardline Venezuelan minister Cabello began months before raid

NEW YORK/MIAMI/WASHINGTON, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Trump administration officials had been in discussions with Venezuela's hardline interior minister Diosdado Cabello months before the U.S. 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 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 January 3 U.S. raid.

Cabello is named in the same U.S. 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 Cabello, which has also touched on sanctions the U.S. 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 U.S. ouster of Maduro, two sources familiar with the discussions said. The administration has also been in touch with 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 Cabello decides to unleash the forces that he controls, it could foment the kind of chaos that Trump wants to avoid and threaten interim President Delcy Rodriguez's grip on power, according to a source briefed on U.S. concerns. Read more...

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