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Venezuela’s military said it recognizes Vice President Delcy Rodriguez as the country’s acting leader after Nicolas Maduro was extracted from Caracas by U.S. forces on Saturday.
Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez issued a statement endorsing a Supreme Court ruling that appointed Rodriguez as acting president for 90 days.
Rodriguez, who is next in the presidential line of succession, served as Maduro’s vice president since 2018, overseeing much of Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy as well as its feared intelligence service. On Saturday, Venezuela’s high court ordered her to assume the role of interim president.
President Trump said on Saturday that the U.S. had been in touch with Rodriguez and that “she’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.”
Rodriguez faced U.S. sanctions during Mr. Trump’s first administration for her role in undermining Venezuelan democracy.
On Saturday night, Rodriguez called Maduro’s capture during a daring overnight U.S. military operation “barbaric” and an “illegal and illegitimate kidnapping.” In a speech broadcast on state TV, she said the U.S. actions were an attack on Venezuela’s sovereignty and demanded the “immediate release” of Maduro and his wife.
Rodriguez left open the door for dialogue with the U.S., while seeking to calm ruling party supporters.
“Here, we have a government with clarity, and I repeat and repeat again … we are willing to have respectful relations,” she said, referring to the Trump administration. “It is the only thing we will accept for a type of relationship after having attacked (Venezuela).”
Mr. Trump issued an apparent threat against Rodriguez, telling The Atlantic in an article published Sunday that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday that the conversations with Rodriguez and the Venezuelan government “are delicate and complicated things that require mature statesmanship, and that’s what we intend to do.”
“But our goals remain the same,” he said. “The difference is that the person who was in charge, even though not legitimately in the past was someone you could not work with. We just could not work with him.”
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, arrived in New York on Sunday. They will face charges face federal charges related to drug trafficking and working with gangs designated as terrorist organizations, which Maduro denies.
A video posted on social media by a White House account showed Maduro, smiling, as he was escorted through that office by two U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents grasping his arms.
In his televised statement on Sunday, Padrino Lopez also said that some of Maduro’s bodyguards were killed “in cold blood” during the U.S. raid. He did not give an exact figure of casualties.
Venezuelan authorities have not yet given an official toll for people hurt or killed in the US operations. Mr. Trump said Saturday that some U.S. forces were injured, but none were killed.
Padrino Lopez also urged Venezuela’s citizens to resume normal activities “of all kinds, economic, work and education, in the coming days.”
“The homeland must follow its constitutional course,” he said.
