WASHINGTON: Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration is prepared to use force to ensure that Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez cooperates with the US, while hoping that self interest will motivate her to advance key American objectives.
Rodriguez has committed to opening Venezuela’s energy sector to US companies, providing preferential access to oil production and using money from oil sales to buy American goods, Rubio said in remarks prepared for delivery at a hearing with lawmakers on Wednesday.
The hearing is Rubio’s first public appearance before Congress since the US raid that led to the capture of her predecessor, Nicolas Maduro, on Jan. 3.
“We are prepared to use force to ensure maximum cooperation if other methods fail,” Rubio said in the statement for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “It is our hope that this will not prove necessary.”
Maduro had been indicted by the US Justice Department on charges that included narco-terrorism, and Rubio praised the operation as a law enforcement effort accomplished without the loss of life among American forces. Maduro, now in a New York jail, has pleaded not guilty.
Democrats have called the raid an illegal act of war that circumvented Congress and now risks entangling the US in an extended commitment to rebuild Venezuela.
New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the committee, criticized the Trump administration for leaving Rodriguez in power. She spent more than seven years as Maduro’s vice president, and Shaheen said that she hasn’t moved to reduce the influence of Iran, China or Russia.
“Her cooperation appears tactical and temporary, not a real shift in Venezuela’s alignment,” Shaheen said in her prepared remarks. “In the process, we’ve traded one dictator for another.”
