According to Mike Waltz, the country was successful in the operation against two fugitives from United States justice, ‘the narco-terrorist Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores’
The representative of the United States in discussing the actions of the North American country in , , states that the capture of is “law enforcement”. “He is responsible for attacks against the people of the United States, for destabilizing the Western Hemisphere and for illegitimately repressing the people of Venezuela. There is no war against Venezuela or its people. We are not occupying a country. This is a law enforcement operation to comply with legal complaints that have existed for decades,” he said.
According to him, the country was successful in the operation against two fugitives from United States justice: “the narco-terrorist Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores”. At the UN meeting, the ambassador insisted on saying that the US arrested a drug trafficker who will now face trial on US soil for the crimes he committed against US citizens over the last 15 years.
He compared the action to the arrest of Manuel Noriega in 1989, when the president of Panama was convicted by a jury in Miami, USA for drug trafficking. “The Panamanian and North American people became safer as a result. Unequivocally, the region also became more stable”, he indicates.
Nicolás Maduro’s legitimacy
Waltz reinforces that Maduro would not be a legitimate president, as he would have manipulated the elections. In fact, the last elections in the country received criticism from international observers due to the lack of difficulty in accessing the official results and accusations of manipulation. Not surprisingly, several countries refused to accept and to this day question the results.
The ambassador repeats the thesis that Maduro is the head of a “violent foreign terrorist organization, the Cártel de los Soles”. “The regime-sponsored group coordinates and depends on other brutal criminal organizations to achieve the objective of using illegal drugs as a weapon against the United States,” it says
“These criminals terrorize, commit brutal crimes including murder, kidnapping, extortion and trafficking in people, drugs and weapons. This administration, under President Trump, will not tolerate this.”
Violation of Human Rights
Under the umbrella of defending human rights in the Western Hemisphere, the ambassador stated that the US will not allow the region to be used as a base of operations by adversaries, competitors and rivals of the United States. “Venezuela cannot be turned into an operational center for Iran, Hezbollah, gangs, Cuban intelligence agents and other actors who control that country,” he states. “The largest energy reserves in the world cannot be allowed to be under the control of adversaries of the United States, of illegitimate leaders, without benefiting the Venezuelan people and being plundered by a small group of oligarchs.”
The intention of the actions in Venezuela, he says, is to bring a better and safer future to the country. “This is why millions of Venezuelans who fled this brutal regime are celebrating and commemorating around the world,” he claims. “President Trump gave diplomacy a chance. He offered Maduro several solutions. He tried to reduce tensions. He refused to accept them”, says Waltz. “The U.S. will not back down from its actions to protect Americans from the scourge of narcoterrorism.”
*With information from Estadão Conteúdo
