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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed profound concern over the recent military operation carried out on January 3, highlighting that it disregarded the principles of international law.
Guterres warned that the US’s significant military move might influence future international relations. Denmark, another NATO member with authority over Greenland, supported his viewpoint, emphasizing that the sanctity of national borders should remain non-negotiable.
Christina Markus Lassen, Denmark’s ambassador to the UN, stressed that no nation should attempt to sway Venezuela’s political landscape through threats or actions that violate international law.
Colombian Ambassador Leonor Zalabata remarked that the operation was reminiscent of the most intrusive interventions seen in their region’s history.
Zalabata asserted that democracy cannot thrive or be fostered through violence or coercion, nor should it be overshadowed by economic agendas.
Russia’s ambassador to the UN went further. Vasily Nebenzya called the US intervention in Venezuela and capture of Maduro is “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 US envoy Mike Waltz defended the action as a justified and “surgical law enforcement operation,” calling out the 15-member council for criticising 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 organisation is this?” said Waltz, who is Trump’s former national security adviser.
The US seized Maduro and his wife early Saturday from their home on a military base and put them aboard a US 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 US amassing a military presence off Venezuela’s coast and blowing up alleged drug trafficking boats.
Trump has insisted that the US 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 US would enforce an oil quarantine that was already in place on sanctioned tankers and use that leverage to press policy changes in Venezuela.