Key points
- US-Venezuela tensions rise over drug trafficking
- Opposition leader linked to US embassy
- Washington backs exiled opposition candidate
CARACAS: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has claimed his government thwarted an alleged plot by “local terrorists” to plant explosives at the US embassy in Caracas — an act he described as a false flag operation meant to inflame tensions with Washington over drug trafficking.
Officials said security had been reinforced around the deserted embassy as relations between the two nations, already strained by sanctions and political disputes, worsen further.
Speaking on his weekly TV programme on Monday, Maduro said two sources which he did not name “agreed on the possibility that a local terrorist group placed an explosive device at the US embassy in Caracas” in order to aggravate the dispute with Washington, according to AFP.
Jorge Rodriguez, head of Venezuela’s delegation for dialogue with its arch-foe, said earlier that Caracas had warned Washington of “a serious threat” from alleged extremists who “attempted to plant lethal explosives at the US embassy.”
“We have reinforced security measures at this diplomatic mission,” added Rodriguez.
Focal point
The South American nation’s socialist government often accuses the opposition of plots.
Caracas and Washington severed diplomatic ties in 2019, and the US embassy has been deserted, barring a few local employees.
Maduro said Monday night, “it is an embassy which is protected, despite all the differences we have had with the governments of the United States.”
Washington has made Venezuela the focal point of its fight against drug trafficking, even though most of the illegal drugs entering the United States originate in, or are shipped through, Mexico.
President Donald Trump’s administration has sent warships and planes to the Caribbean region and bombed several small boats off the coast of Venezuela, which it says were carrying drugs bound for the United States.
At least 21 people have been killed in the strikes, which Trump claims are halting the flow of drugs across the Caribbean.
“We’re stopping drugs at a level that nobody’s ever seen,” he told an audience of US Navy sailors in Virginia on Sunday.
Regime change
Maduro says Trump’s true goal is regime change.
Caracas has responded to the “threats” by deploying thousands of troops along Venezuela’s land and sea borders and signing up thousands of members to a civilian militia.
The United States did not recognize Maduro’s 2024 re-election, rejected by the Venezuelan opposition and much of the world as a stolen vote.
During his first term, Trump tried to dislodge Maduro by recognizing an opposition leader as interim president and imposing sanctions on Venezuela’s all-important oil sector.
But Maduro clung to power, with the support of the military.
For weeks, rumours have circulated on social networks that Venezuela’s current opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, who has been in hiding since last year’s election, is sheltering at the US embassy.
Restoration of popular sovereignty
Her whereabouts have not been confirmed by the media.
Washington has recognized a candidate backed by Machado, former senator Eduardo Gonzalez Urrutia, as Venezuela’s rightful president.
The opposition’s tally of ballots from last year’s election showed Gonzalez Urrutia, who had been the favourite to win the vote, easily defeating the unpopular Maduro, reports AFP.
Threatened with arrest over his victory claim, Gonzalez Urrutia went into exile in Spain late last year.
In a video last month, he and Machado backed the US military pressure on the Maduro regime as a “necessary measure” toward the “restoration of popular sovereignty in Venezuela.”
