Brazil condemns US strike on Venezuela

Brazil joins Venezuela’s con­dem­na­tion of the re­port­ed US mil­i­tary strike and al­leged cap­ture of Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro, call­ing it a vi­o­la­tion of sov­er­eign­ty and a dan­ger­ous prece­dent for re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty.

Venezue­lan For­eign Min­is­ter Yván Gil said the Venezue­lan con­sti­tu­tion af­firms Maduro as the coun­try’s pres­i­dent and called for his “phys­i­cal pres­ence in Venezuela” to be re­stored im­me­di­ate­ly by the Unit­ed States.

Brazil­ian Pres­i­dent Luiz In­á­cio Lu­la da Sil­va de­scribed the bomb­ings and cap­ture of Maduro as “a most se­ri­ous af­front to Venezuela’s sov­er­eign­ty and yet an­oth­er ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous prece­dent for the en­tire in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.” He said such at­tacks vi­o­late in­ter­na­tion­al law and risk pro­mot­ing “a world of vi­o­lence, chaos, and in­sta­bil­i­ty, where the law of the strongest pre­vails over mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism.”

The Brazil­ian leader said the strikes re­call “the worst mo­ments of in­ter­fer­ence in the pol­i­tics of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean” and threat­ened the re­gion’s sta­tus as a Zone of Peace. Lu­la called on the Unit­ed Na­tions and the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to re­spond and stressed Brazil’s will­ing­ness to pro­mote di­a­logue and co­op­er­a­tion.