KEY POINTS
- Rubio says Washington is ready to work with Venezuela’s acting leaders.
- Rubio stresses US will judge actions and retain leverage if leaders do not comply.
- Maduro was captured by US forces in Caracas on Saturday and is now detained in New York.
- Interim President Delcy Rodríguez demanded Maduro and his wife’s immediate release.
- Rodríguez condemned the US operation as a violation of international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty.
WASHINGTON: The United States is ready to work with Venezuela’s acting leaders if they make what it considers the “right decision,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday, after the capture of President Nicolás Maduro in a US military operation.
“We’re going to judge everything by what they do, and we’re going to see what they do,” Rubio told CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
“I do know this: that if they don’t make the right decision, that the United States will retain multiple levers of leverage.”
US commandos captured Maduro from a compound in Caracas on Saturday in a military operation involving jets, helicopters, warships and ground troops.
He is now in a New York detention cell awaiting a court appearance expected Monday on federal narcotrafficking and weapons charges.
Rubio appeared to significantly soften President Donald Trump’s extraordinary statements on Saturday that the United States will “run” Venezuela and that he would not be afraid to put military “boots on the ground.”
Instead, Rubio made clear that Washington is ready to try working with Maduro’s vice president and now acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, and the rest of the Maduro’s cabinet.
“We are going to see what happens moving forward,” he said.
‘Moving forward’
“We’re going to make an assessment on the basis of what they do, not what they say publicly in the interim, not what, you know, what they’ve done in the past in many cases, but what they do moving forward.”
He also gave no indication that the Trump administration will support opposition figures who have previously been hailed by Washington as the country’s legitimate leaders.
Asked about backing Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Rubio said he had “admiration” for her, but avoided any demands that she — or her party’s candidate in the 2024 election, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia — become interim leaders.
He said the United States wanted to avoid getting mired in nation building.
Rubio’s remarks contrasted with Trump’s statements that “we’re going to stay until such time as the proper transition can take place” and that his own cabinet officials would be in charge of the country.
Rubio said US pressure would remain on Venezuela in the form of the large naval presence in the Caribbean and an oil export embargo “that allows us to exert tremendous leverage over what happens next.”
Rodríguez demands Maduro’s ‘immediate release’
Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, 56, was sworn in as interim president of the South American country on Saturday.
Hours after the capture of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, she chaired a National Defence Council session and demanded the couple’s “immediate release” while condemning the US military operation.
Standing before the Venezuelan flag, Rodríguez said the early-morning operation represents a blatant violation of international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty.
She added that the action must be rejected by Venezuelans and condemned by governments across Latin America.
“We call on the peoples of the great homeland to remain united, because what was done to Venezuela can be done to anyone. That brutal use of force to bend the will of the people can be carried out against any country,” she told the council in an address broadcast by state television channel VTV.
Hours after Maduro’s capture, and before Rodríguez addressed the National Defence Council, US President Donald Trump said at a press conference that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken with the vice president.
According to Trump, she appeared willing to work with Washington on a new phase for Venezuela.
“She had a conversation with Marco. She said, ‘We’re going to do whatever you need.’ I think she was quite courteous. We’re going to do this right,” Trump said.
