Simon Nare
International Relations Minister Ronald Lamola has said that a United Nations Security Council meeting scheduled for Monday night will bring global scrutiny to the US military operation in Venezuela that led to the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Speaking on the sidelines of an ANC national executive committee meeting in the North West on Monday, Lamola said that the United States would most likely use its veto power to block any action against it, but added it was encouraging that the details would be aired publicly.
“Obviously the veto issues is always an obstacle in the UN Security Council, but the fact that this issue will be ventilated in the Security Council, the whole world will know what happened, how it happened, and this will enable the people of the world to act in unison and in solidarity, because they will now know the facts.
“They would now know exactly how the world must move on. So it is important.
Even if the issue is vetoed, the facts that will be made public and transparent are a very important persuasive force that the world will continue to engage on,” he said.
Lamola said South Africa would continue to be guided by principle and the rule of law, and said it could not be that powerful nations continued to intimidate smaller nations, as had happened before the first and second world wars.
He said international solidarity and collective action had helped bring stability in the global village since the end of World War Two.
“We can’t go back to a period after the First World War, where there were no rules, where there was no world based on international law.
“So, we have to continue to call for rules based on international law that is governed and is rule-based, because if we don’t do so, some of the middle countries like ourselves, third world countries, will have no say anywhere in the world, and might will always be right,” he said.
Venezuela condemned the US “military aggression” on Saturday after President Donald Trump announced that America had carried out large-scale strikes and that Maduro and Flores had been “captured and flown out of the country” during a special forces operation.
The military attacks took place in the capital Caracas as well as the states of Miranda, Aragua and La Guaira.
The US has alleged that Maduro is the head of a state-backed cocaine trafficking network that helped transnational criminal groups move drugs to America.
The South American oil-rich country said the attacks violated the United Nations Charter and threatened stability in the Latin American and Caribbean regions.
Maduro has been charged with narco-terrorism (narco-terrorism conspiracy), cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
Flores has been charged with cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
Maduro and Flores are set to appear in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Monday, 7 pm South African time.
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