Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, co-signing a statement with 2024 presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, announced on Sunday that she will not participate in US-backed talks with the de facto government of Delcy Rodríguez (who heads an interim administration following the January ouster of former President Nicolás Maduro in a US-backed military operation) scheduled for August. The initiative, which Washington had praised as a step toward political reconciliation, was announced in mid-July by Rodríguez's government and a group of former opposition parliamentarians under a plan for "strengthening democracy." Machado said she would not block "any initiative that would produce real progress" but stopped short of endorsing the talks, which come amid ongoing tensions over her opposition's disputed 2024 election claims and the aftermath of twin earthquakes last month that killed more than 5,000 people in Venezuela.