The Obama administration said on Thursday that it was sending a delegation to Venezuela for the funeral of late President Hugo Chavez and that it wants better ties with the South American country.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the delegation comprises former House of Representatives member William Delahunt, current member Gregory Meeks and James Derham, the charge d'affaires at the American embassy in Caracas, capital of Venezuela.

Chavez, Venezuela's president since February 1999, died on Tuesday at the age of 58 after a two-year battle with cancer which was first detected in his pelvis. Twenty-two heads of state have confirmed their intention to attend his funeral slated for Friday, said Venezuela's foreign minister.

Calling on the Venezuelans to choose their next president " democratically," Nuland said "We'd like to get to a place where we can improve our bilateral relationship."

"We believe that there is important work we can do together, particularly in confronting counter-narcotics problems, tracking international terrorism, broadening our commercial relationship," she told reporters at a regular news briefing.

"But in order to get there, we have to get past the kind of zero sum accusations against the United States that we've seen in the last couple of days," she added.

The Venezuelan government expelled two U.S. military attaches from Caracas on Tuesday, just before Chavez's death was announced, accusing them of participating in illegal acts that promote destabilization of the country.

"I'm not going to speak to what the motives of the Venezuelan side were in this, but we're obviously disappointed by these false accusations levied against our embassy officials," Nuland said. " You know, this is part of a tired playbook of alleging foreign interference as a political football in internal Venezuelan politics."

She refused, however, to say whether Washington was considering reciprocal action as claimed by a U.S. official.

Washington and Caracas have not had each other's ambassador since July 2010, as bilateral relations are strained in recent years. Endi

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