MONTEVIDEO — Uruguay will not restore full diplomatic relations with Venezuela while Delcy Rodríguez is in power, and will do so only after an election confirmed by an independent court, Foreign Minister Mario Lubetkin said in an interview with Brazil’s Folha de S.Paulo.
He described Rodríguez as “as illegitimate” as Nicolás Maduro, the man she replaced.
Asked whether Uruguay would resume ties with Caracas, Lubetkin answered:
“Absolutely not, and we won’t resume them.” He gave this reason: “Because nothing has changed. There were elections that we questioned.” Maduro, he noted, “is now, on top of everything, imprisoned in the U.S.,” and “from that president emerges a president as illegitimate as he is.”
He then set out Uruguay’s condition. “That there be elections, that someone wins, that an independent court confirm that María or José won,” he said. Uruguay would then establish diplomatic relations with “the legitimate winner of a democratic election,” in his words.
Lubetkin, who spoke on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, serves in the government of President Yamandú Orsi.
Uruguay currently holds the rotating presidency of Mercosur and leads CELAC, the regional bloc of Latin American and Caribbean states.
Uruguay refused to recognize the results of Venezuela’s July 2024 presidential election, which gave Maduro a third term amid fraud allegations. Caracas responded on July 29, 2024, by announcing it was breaking diplomatic relations with Uruguay. Consular services between the two countries were reactivated in June 2025, though Montevideo stressed at the time that this did not mean recognizing Maduro as president.
The stance carried over after the January 3 U.S. strikes on Venezuela, in which Maduro and his wife were captured and taken to the United States, and Rodríguez was sworn in as acting president.
On January 9, Lubetkin said Uruguay did not recognize her. “In the same way we do not recognize Maduro, we do not recognize the person who has now put herself in Maduro’s position,” he said then. His latest comments repeat that position and add the electoral condition.
Rodríguez Promises Elections — With No Date
The statement comes as Rodríguez says a political opening is underway. At the U.N. on September 23, she said “there will be elections in Venezuela” and that a political dialogue with the opposition has begun, but she gave no date. She said the talks cover judicial institutions, restoring political rights and reform of the Supreme Court.
A second round of talks ended in Caracas on September 25, with the opposition delegation led by former lawmaker Dinorah Figuera.
A third round is expected in mid-October.
The United States is engaging with Rodríguez as well. She met President Donald Trump in New York, and in August the two governments reached a sweeping oil agreement. Washington said the meeting did not amount to recognizing her as an elected president.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the transition needs institutional rebuilding and economic recovery before free elections.
Lubetkin’s position puts Uruguay in a small group of governments that are still withholding legitimacy from Rodríguez even as the U.S. deals with her.
Uruguay’s condition is the same one the opposition and many governments in the region have pressed since 2024: a vote that is verifiable and independently certified. With no election date set, normalization with Montevideo has no timetable either.
