Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil Pinto has told the United Nations General Assembly that the United States has an “illegal and completely immoral military threat hanging over our heads”, as reports emerge that the US is planning to escalate attacks on the South American country.
Pinto told the gathering of UN member states on Friday in New York that his country was grateful for the support of governments and people “that are speaking out against this attempt to bring war to the Caribbean and South America”.
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The minister claimed US threats towards his country were aimed at allowing “external powers to rob Venezuela’s immeasurable oil and gas wealth”.
He also accused Washington of using “vulgar and perverse lies” to “justify an atrocious, extravagant and immoral multibillion-dollar military threat”.
Earlier on Friday, US broadcaster NBC News reported that US military officials are drawing up plans to “target drug traffickers inside Venezuela” with air attacks, citing two unnamed US officials.
US President Donald Trump said last week that US forces had carried out a third strike targeting a vessel he said was “trafficking illicit narcotics”. At least 17 people have been killed in the three attacks.
Experts have cast doubt on the legality of US attacks on foreign boats in international waters, while data from both the UN and the US itself suggest that Venezuela is not a major source of cocaine coming into the US, as Trump has claimed.
In an address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump said of drug smugglers: “To every terrorist thug smuggling poisonous drugs into the United States of America, please be warned that we will blow you out of existence.”
By contrast, Colombian President Gustavo Petro used his UNGA address to call for a “criminal process” to be opened against Trump over the attacks on vessels in the Caribbean, which had killed Venezuelans who had not been convicted of any crime.
The US has so far deployed eight warships to international waters off Venezuela’s coast, backed by F-35 fighter jets sent to Puerto Rico, in what it calls an anti-drug operation.
Washington has also refused an appeal for dialogue from Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, whom the Trump administration has accused of drug trafficking – a claim Maduro has strenuously denied.
Maduro and his late predecessor, Hugo Chavez, had once been regular presences at the