Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said late Thursday that talks with the opposition were heading in a "good" direction and hailed them "historic."

The two sides had agreed to form working groups to deal with such issues as an end to more than two months of bloody anti-government protests and the victims of the failed coup against former President Hugo Chavez in 2002, said a statement issued after a meeting between the government and the opposition coalition Democratic Unity Roundtable on Thursday.

The Venezuelan government and the opposition coalition held two rounds of talks in early April in the company of foreign ministers of the Union of South American Nations.