Venezuelan Socialist Party vice president Diosdado Cabello predicted US Marines will “likely” enter the South American country, speaking a week after a confrontation between aircraft belonging to the two countries’ armed forces.
“We are few, a small country, we are very humble, and here it is likely that the US Marines enter. It is likely that they enter,” Cabello told the Sao Paulo Forum, a gathering of leftist politicians and activists from across Latin America, without citing evidence.
“Their problem will be getting out of Venezuela.”
US-Venezuela tensions have escalated this year since Juan Guaido, leader of the opposition-controlled National Assembly, invoked the constitution to assume an interim presidency in January.
The United States and most Western democracies have recognised Guaido as the rightful leader.
The Trump administration has said it prefers to continue to use sanctions and diplomacy to pressure Maduro to step down, but has not ruled out military action as an option. Cabello presides over the Constituent Assembly, a legislative super-body loyal to Maduro which is not recognised by the opposition.
He is widely viewed as the second most powerful official in Venezuela’s government, after Maduro. The US military accused a Venezuelan fighter aircraft of “aggressively” shadowing a US Navy plane in international airspace over the Caribbean Sea on July 19. Venezuela’s government said the “reconnaissance and intelligence aircraft” had entered its airspace.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Cabello’s remarks.
The National Assembly this week approved Venezuela’s re-entry into a regional defence treaty the country left in 2013.
Opposition hardliners had pressured Guaido to re-join the treaty. Maduro retains control of state functions and calls Guaido a US puppet seeking to oust him in a coup.
On Saturday, Maduro called the decision to rejoin the treaty “illegal” and “treasonous.” Venezuela’s Supreme Court on Friday ruled the reincorporation was “null” and that efforts to invoke the treaty would be considered a “hostile act.”
Meanwhile Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said a dialogue to resolve Venezuela’s political crisis should have “no preconditions,” as he visited the small South American country of Suriname at the end of a multi-nation Latin American tour.
“We, just like our Surinamese friends, are convinced that it can result through a direct dialogue between the government and opposition with no preconditions, and without any threats that we hear coming from various capitals,” Lavrov said alongside Surinamese Foreign Minister Yldiz Pollack-Beighle in the capital Paramirabo.
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro walks next to his wife Cilia Flores during a ceremony with Venezuelan militia members in Caracas, Venezuela.
