VENEZUELAN President Nicolas Maduro says the “foreign-directed economic war” on his country would be the focus of next Friday’s talks with the coup-bent opposition.

But fractious extremist elements of the Democratic Unity Roundtable (Mud) coalition vowed to storm the presidential palace and force Mr Maduro out.

“The priority agenda for the country is economic, and productive recovery, solving the issue of distribution, of brutal speculation in various commercial sectors,” Mr Maduro said in a broadcast from the Miraflores palace in Caracas.