\n<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump says the United States will \u201crun\u201d Venezuela until a political transition can take place, just hours after US forces bombed the South American country and \u201ccaptured\u201d its president, Nicolas Maduro.<\/p>\n
Speaking during a news conference on Saturday, Trump said the US would \u201crun the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition\u201d.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The Trump administration launched attacks on the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, in the early hours of Saturday after a months-long pressure campaign against Maduro\u2019s government.<\/p>\n That campaign included US seizures of oil tankers off the Venezuelan coast, as well as deadly attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean that were widely denounced as extrajudicial killings.<\/p>\n Washington had accused the Venezuelan leader, who has been in power since 2013, of having ties to drug cartels \u2013 a claim rejected by Maduro, who said the US was working to depose him and take control of Venezuela\u2019s vast oil reserves.<\/p>\n During Saturday\u2019s news conference, Trump said \u201cvery large United States oil companies\u201d would move into Venezuela to \u201cfix the badly broken \u2026 oil infrastructure and start making money for the country\u201d.<\/p>\n He added that his administration\u2019s actions \u201cwill make the people of Venezuela rich, independent and safe\u201d.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has defended the \u201ccapture\u201d of Maduro by saying the left-wing leader faced drug-related charges in the US.<\/p>\n Trump earlier said the Venezuelan president \u2013 who was taken into US custody along with his wife, Cilia Flores \u2013 was being transferred to New York to face those charges.<\/p>\n But legal experts, world leaders and Democratic Party lawmakers in the US have condemned the administration\u2019s actions as a violation of international law.<\/p>\n \u201cAttacking countries, in flagrant violation of international law, is the first step toward a world of violence, chaos, and instability, where the law of the strongest prevails over multilateralism,\u201d Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wrote on X.<\/p>\n Ben Saul, the United Nations\u2019 special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, slammed what he called Washington\u2019s \u201cillegal abduction\u201d of Maduro. \u201cI condemn the US\u2019 illegal aggression against Venezuela,\u201d Saul wrote on social media.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for UN chief Antonio Guterres said he was \u201cdeeply alarmed\u201d by the situation, describing the US\u2019s actions in Venezuela as setting \u201ca dangerous precedent\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Secretary-General continues to emphasize the importance of full respect \u2013 by all \u2013 of international law, including the UN Charter. He\u2019s deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected,\u201d Guterres\u2019s office said in a statement.<\/p>\n Earlier on Saturday, Venezuela\u2019s defence minister had released a defiant statement in response to the US attacks, urging people to remain united.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will not negotiate; we will not give up,\u201d Vladimir Padrino Lopez said in a statement, stressing that Venezuela\u2019s independence is not up for negotiations. \u201cWe must maintain calm and [be] united in order to prevail in these dire moments.\u201d<\/p>\n It remains unclear how exactly the US plans to \u201crun\u201d Venezuela \u2013 and how long the purported transitional period will last.<\/p>\n During Saturday\u2019s news conference, Trump said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was sworn in as president just a little while ago,\u201d Trump told reporters. \u201cShe had a long conversation with [Rubio], and she said, \u2018We\u2019ll do whatever you need.\u2019 I think she was quite gracious, but she really doesn\u2019t have a choice.\u201d<\/p>\n Rodriguez appeared to contradict that in a news conference in Caracas later in the day.<\/p>\n \u201cWe demand the immediate release of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. The only president of Venezuela is President Nicolas Maduro,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Reporting from Chile,\u00a0Al Jazeera\u2019s Latin America editor Lucia Newman said that, if Rodriguez is \u201con board\u201d with the US plan for Venezuela as Trump and Rubio previously suggested, \u201cshe certainly didn\u2019t sound like it\u201d during her address.<\/p>\n \u201cShe sounded like her typical fiery self, very much on the side of \u2026 Maduro, demanding that he be released and saying that Venezuela would not be a colony of the United States,\u201d Newman explained.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Harlan Ullman, a former US naval officer, also told Al Jazeera that \u201cthe notion of America taking over Venezuela is going to explode in our faces.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen Trump says, \u2018We\u2019re going to run the country\u2019 \u2013 We\u2019re not capable of running America, how are we going to be able to run Venezuela?\u201d Ullman said.<\/p>\n \u201cI do not believe that we have a plan for dealing with Venezuela,\u201d he added. \u201cA country is extraordinarily complex. We lack the knowledge, understanding and all the logistics to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n US President Donald Trump says the United States will \u201crun\u201d Venezuela until a political transition can take place, just hours after US forces bombed the South American country and \u201ccaptured\u201d its president, Nicolas Maduro. Speaking during a news conference on Saturday, Trump said the US would \u201crun the country until such time as we can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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