‘Dangerous precedent’: UNSC to meet tomorrow to discuss US military operation in Venezuela

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) will hold emergency meeting on Monday to discuss US military operations in Venezuela. 

Spokeswoman for Somali Permanent Mission to the United Nations, Khadija Ahmed said the meeting will be held under the title: ‘Threats to International Peace and Security’, Radio Pakistan reported.

Somalia holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council for January.

The development comes a day after US attacked Venezuela and deposed its long-serving autocratic President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday, President Donald Trump said, in Washington’s most direct intervention in Latin America since the 1989 invasion of Panama.

“The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the country,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Ahead of the overnight strikes, the US had accused Maduro of running a “narco-state” and rigging the 2024 election, which the opposition said it won overwhelmingly.

The Venezuelan leader, a 63-year-old former bus driver handpicked by the dying Hugo Chavez to succeed him in 2013, has denied those claims and said Washington was intent on taking control of his nation’s oil reserves, the largest in the world.

READ MORE: Trump says US will run Venezuela after Maduro seized

The US has not made such a direct intervention in its backyard region since the invasion of Panama 37 years ago to depose military leader Manuel Noriega over similar allegations.

Venezuela’s government said civilians and military personnel died in Saturday’s strikes.

The UNSC meeting will on Monday discuss the actions, which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described as “a dangerous precedent.” Russia and China, both major backers of Venezuela, criticised the US, AFP reported.

“China firmly opposes such hegemonic behavior by the US, which seriously violates international law, violates Venezuela’s sovereignty and threatens peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean,” China’s foreign ministry said.

Trump’s comments about an open-ended military presence in Venezuela echoed the rhetoric around past invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which ended in American withdrawals after years of costly occupation and thousands of US casualties.

A US occupation “won’t cost us a penny” because the United States would be reimbursed from the “money coming out of the ground,” Trump said, referring to Venezuela’s oil reserves, a subject he returned to repeatedly during Saturday’s press conference.

Trump’s focus on foreign affairs provides fuel for Democrats to criticise him ahead of midterm congressional elections in November, when control of both houses of Congress is at stake, with Republicans controlling both by narrow margins.