MARACAY, Venezuela – Venezuela and the United States soon will normalize diplomatic ties by returning their respective ambassadors to each other’s capital, the Andean nation’s foreign minister said Wednesday.

Diplomatic links will be fully reestablished “in the coming days,” Nicolas Maduro said in Maracay, some 120 kilometers (74 miles) west of Caracas, officials at the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry confirmed to Efe.

In Maracay in the coming hours, the 6th Extraordinary Summit of the Venezuelan-led Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA, will commence and will formally welcome to the group Ecuador, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda.

Caracas daily Ultimas Noticias reported Tuesday that Maduro and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon agreed on the normalization of relations during a recent telephone conversation.

Chavez expelled the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela last September in solidarity with Bolivian President Evo Morales’ expulsion of Washington’s envoy in La Paz, whom he accused of meddling in his country’s internal affairs.

The U.S. government responded by booting out the Bolivian and Venezuelan ambassadors in Washington.

Chavez and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton briefly discussed the restoration of full diplomatic relations in April at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, where the Venezuelan said that he had already designated former Foreign Minister Roy Chaderton as Caracas’ next envoy to the United States.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration called Chavez’s idea of discussing the return of the envoys “positive,” adding that it was analyzing the matter, although it did not provide a date for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations.

Under the Bush administration, Washington repeatedly denounced Chavez as a would-be dictator and a destabilizing force in Latin America, while the Venezuelan leader missed few opportunities to denounce U.S. “imperialism.”

Despite the persistent bad blood, Venezuela remains a key oil supplier for the United States and a big customer for U.S. exports. EFE