Trump to meet Venezuela’s interim leader at UN next week

US President Donald Trump will meet Venezuela's interim leader Delcy Rodriguez for the first time during the United Nations General Assembly next week, a US official said Friday.

Trump, who ordered the operation to topple Venezuela's longtime leader Nicolas Maduro in January, "will participate in a pull-aside with the acting president" on Tuesday, Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN, told reporters.

Rodriguez was Venezuela's vice president under Maduro, but has thus far cooperated with Washington's demands, including granting US access to Venezuela's vast oil reserves, the largest in the world.

Under a recent agreement that Trump called the "biggest oil deal in world history," the two countries announced that the United States will be granted control of about one-fifth of Venezuela's reserves -- a move that Rodriguez's critics decried as signing away sovereignty over the country's resources.

Earlier this month, at a G20 meeting of energy ministers, US oil company Continental Resources signed a memorandum of understanding with Venezuela's national oil company PDVSA to develop oil from the prolific Orinoco basin.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright called that project "a milestone deal in the US-Venezuelan relationship," as well as "a milestone deal in making the Western Hemisphere the center of the global energy system."

In January, Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were captured in a lightning US military raid. They were then transported to a federal jail in New York where they await trial on drug trafficking and other charges.