Maduro orders military drills in response to US threats

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered his armed forces to carry out a national exercise next week in response to US President Donald Trump’s threat of possible military action. He also asked the pro-government constituent assembly to investigate the opposition for allegedly supporting Trump’s remarks.    

Trump’s comments were prompted by the failure of the opposition’s campaign to oust him after months of destabilizing protests, Maduro told thousands of supporters at a Caracas rally on Monday    

Calling for “justice,” he said the truth commission set up by the constitutional assembly should investigate opposition leaders as “traitors” for not speaking out clearly against the US president. Opponents who don’t cooperate in the investigation will face arrest, he warned.    

“If they don’t show up on their own, we’ll go looking for them with handcuffs,” he told a few thousand government supporters, many of them state workers, gathered at the presidential palace.    

The main opposition alliance rejected the use of military threats to resolve Venezuela’s crisis.      

But its statement Sunday didn’t mention Trump by name, instead blaming Maduro for converting Venezuela into a threat to regional stability and accusing him of ceding the country’s sovereignty and oil wealth to Cuba and other foreign powers.    

Over 120 people have been killed since anti-government protests began in April, driven by outrage over shortages of food and medicine and Maduro’s creation of a legislative body that some governments around the world say is “dictatorial”.

A starving trek to Colombia

An estimated 25,000 Venezuelans make the trek across the Simon Bolivar International Bridge into Colombia each day. Many come for a few hours to work or trade goods on the black market, looking for household supplies they cannot find back home.

But increasingly, they are coming to eat in one of a half-dozen facilities offering struggling Venezuelans a free plate of food.

Under a scorching sun just a short walk from Colombia's border with Venezuela, hundreds of hungry men, women and children line up for bowls of chicken and rice — the first full meal some have eaten in days.

According to one recent survey, about 75 percent of Venezuelans lost an average of 19 pounds (8.7 kilogrammes) last year.

Civilian-military exercise

“I have given the order to the armed forces’ joint chiefs of staff to start preparations for a national civil-military exercise for the integrated armed defence of the Venezuelan nation,” Maduro said in response to Trump’s military action comments.    

The drill will take place on August 26 and 27, he said.    

“Everyone has to join the defence plan, millions of men and women, let’s see how the American imperialists like it,” Maduro told supporters.

Trump advisers fooling him?

Maduro's government seized on Trump's warning last Friday that he was looking at a range of scenarios against Venezuela, "including a possible military option if necessary."

Maduro said that Trump's advisers had confused him about the true situation in Venezuela.

"I want to talk by phone with Mr Trump, to tell him 'They're fooling you, Trump, everything they tell you about Venezuela is a lie. They're throwing you off a cliff'."

Venezuelan Defense Minister General Vladimir Padrino called it "crazy," saying it showed America had "dropped its mask" in terms of wanting to attack his country.

The Maduro administration says Trump's words bolster its oft-repeated claim that Washington has designs to grab control of Venezuela's proven oil reserves, the largest in the world.

The threat, made in response to Venezuela's deepening economic crisis and Maduro's moves toward what the US labels a "dictatorship," has been rebuffed by all Latin America - even countries opposed to Venezuela.

The US Department of Defense said it had received no orders from Trump to prepare any sort of military action against Venezuela.

US Vice President Mike Pence, who is touring allies in Latin America to marshall joint action against Caracas, said Trump's warning stood - but he hoped a "peaceable solution" would be found.

Pence, on his first stop of a tour taking in Colombia, Argentina, Chile and Panama, said that the US intended to prevent Venezuela becoming a "failed state."

"We will not stand by as Venezuela crumbles, but it's important to note, as the president said, that a failed state in Venezuela threatens the security and prosperity of the hemisphere," Pence said.

"The phantom of military interventions in Latin America disappeared a long time ago and we don't want it to return," Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, the staunchest US ally in the region, said Sunday at a news conference alongside Pence.

Against foreign interference

The Caracas rally stretching in front of Maduro took up the president's exhortations against the US with cries of "Yankee go home!"

The leftist leader vowed to "defend the country with tanks, planes, missiles."

Venezuela, an ally of Cuba and Russia, reportedly bought Russian anti-aircraft defences and tanks years ago, under Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez."

The Venezuelan opposition coalition on Sunday rejected "the use of force, or the threat of applying such force, by whatever country against Venezuela."

China, too, said it stood against foreign powers interfering in other countries.

Washington has already imposed unilateral sanctions on Maduro and nearly two dozen of his officials for what it sees as a shift to "dictatorship."

Venezuela's economy is heavily reliant on oil exports. Shipments to the United States - its biggest paying customer - account for 40 percent of its crude production, but only eight percent of US oil imports.

The US sanctions so far have targeted individuals and not Venezuela's oil industry, which would have consequences for US refineries.