UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting Monday after an audacious U.S. military operation in Venezuela over the weekend to capture leader Nicolás Maduro, with the United Nations’ top official warning that America may have violated international law.
Before the U.N.’s most powerful body, both allies and adversaries blasted President Trump’s intervention and him signaling the possibility of expanding military action to countries like Colombia and Mexico over drug trafficking accusations. He also reupped his threat to take over the Danish territory of Greenland for the sake of U.S. security interests.
In a statement, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he is “deeply concerned that rules of international law have not been respected with regard to the 3 January military action.”
He added that the “grave” action by the U.S. could set a precedent for how future relations between nations. Denmark, a fellow member of NATO with jurisdiction over the vast mineral-rich island of Greenland, echoed Guterres’ concerns, saying the “inviolability of borders is not up for negotiation.”
“No state should seek to influence political outcomes in Venezuela through the use of threat of force or through other means inconsistent with international law,” said Christina Markus Lassen, Danish ambassador to the U.N.
Colombian Ambassador Leonor Zalabata said the raid was reminiscent of “the worst interference in our area in the past.”
“Democracy cannot be defended or promoted through violence and coercion, and it cannot be superseded, either, by economic interests,” Zalabata said.
Russia’s ambassador to the U.N. went further. Vasily Nebenzya called the U.S. intervention in Venezuela and capture of Maduro “a turn back to the era of lawlessness” by America.
“We cannot allow the United States to proclaim itself as some kind of a supreme judge, which alone bears the right to invade any country, to label culprits, to hand down and to enforce punishments irrespective of notions of international law, sovereignty and nonintervention,” he said.
But U.S. envoy Mike Waltz defended the action as a justified and “surgical law enforcement operation,” calling out the 15-member council for criticizing the targeting of Maduro.
“If the United Nations in this body confers legitimacy on an illegitimate narco-terrorist with the same treatment in this charter of a democratically elected president or head of state, what kind of organization is this?” said Waltz, who is Trump’s former national security advisor.
The U.S. seized Maduro and his wife early Saturday from their home on a military base and put them aboard a U.S. warship to face prosecution in New York in a Justice Department indictment accusing them of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy. Maduro made his first appearance in a Manhattan courthouse on Monday.
His stunning removal came after months of the U.S. amassing a military presence off Venezuela’s coast and blowing up alleged drug trafficking boats. Trump has insisted that the U.S. would run Venezuela at least temporarily and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, however, says the U.S. would enforce an oil quarantine that was already in place on sanctioned tankers and use that leverage to press policy changes in Venezuela.
Amiri and Peltz write for the Associated Press.
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