President Donald Trump threatened Sunday that Venezuela’s new leader will pay a “big price” if she does not cooperate with the United States, after US forces seized and jailed her former boss Nicolas Maduro.
If interim president Delcy Rodriguez “doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump told The Atlantic in a telephone interview.
US forces attacked Caracas before dawn Saturday, bombing military targets and spiriting away Maduro and his wife to face federal narcotrafficking charges in New York. The deposed leader is due to appear in a Manhattan court on Monday.
The Trump administration says it is willing to work with the remainder of Maduro’s government as long as Washington’s goals, particularly opening access to US investment in Venezuela’s enormous crude oil reserves, are met.
Opposition figure Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, in an Instagram post Sunday from exile in Spain, said the capture of Maduro was “an important step, but not enough” to return the crisis-hit nation to normal.
Gonzalez Urrutia called for the results of the 2024 election — which he claims to have won — to be upheld and for all political prisoners to be freed to ensure a “democratic transition.”
Venezuelans braced for the political aftermath of the stunning raid, in which US commandos swooped in on helicopters, backed by fighter jets and naval forces, to capture Maduro.
Residents queued up to buy food in grocery stores, and the masked and heavily armed police visible the previous day were gone, AFP correspondents said.
Some 2,000 Maduro supporters — including rifle-wielding men on motorcycles — rallied Sunday in Caracas, however, with crowds shouting and waving red, blue and yellow Venezuelan flags.
The Venezuelan military announced it recognised Rodriguez — previously Maduro’s vice president—as acting president, and urged calm.
No Venezuela death toll has been announced, but Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said a “large part” of Maduro’s security team were killed “in cold blood,” as well as military personnel and civilians.
Who will run Venezuela?
Despite the success of the initial US operation, questions mounted over Trump’s strategy.
The Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, told ABC News that Americans were left “scratching their heads in wonderment and in fear.”
Trump said Saturday the United States will “run” Venezuela, a South American country of about 30 million people.
And he told The Atlantic that “rebuilding there and regime change — anything you want to call it — is better than what you have right now.”
But Secretary of State Marco Rubio stressed Sunday that Washington is not seeking complete regime change or elections, but rather, “we’re going to make an assessment on the basis of what they do,” he told CBS News.
The United States is fighting drug traffickers, “not a war against Venezuela,” Rubio told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
However, he said a large US naval presence would remain in the Caribbean to enforce a blockade of Venezuelan oil exports for “tremendous leverage.”
Trump has made clear Washington intends to call the shots in Venezuela, with a focus on securing access to the world’s largest proven oil reserves.
“We’re going to run the country” until a transition can be made, he said Saturday, also insisting that military “boots on the ground” remained a possibility.
In her first remarks since the US attack, Rodriguez struck a defiant note, saying Maduro was the country’s sole legitimate leader and that “we’re ready to defend our natural resources.”
‘Good night’
Handcuffed and in sandals, Maduro was escorted by federal agents through a Manhattan US Drug Enforcement Administration facility late Saturday, a video posted by the White House showed.
“Good night, happy new year,” the 63-year-old leftist was heard saying in English.
Earlier, he was photographed aboard a US naval ship blindfolded and handcuffed, with noise-cancelling ear protectors.
Maduro, a self-described socialist, led Venezuela with an iron fist for more than a decade through a series of elections widely considered rigged. He came to power after the death of his charismatic mentor, Hugo Chavez.
As news of Maduro’s capture rippled out, exiled Venezuelans waved flags and celebrated in plazas from Madrid to Santiago. About eight million Venezuelans have fled the grinding poverty and political suppression of their homeland.
Source: AFP
