US tells UN it will defund Maduro, Venezuela’s drug cartel

• The US tells the UN it will cut off Maduro, the drug cartel, from resources.
• Russia warns US actions could set precedent for Latin America.
• China urges the US to “avoid further escalation of tensions”.

The United States told the United Nations on Tuesday it would impose and impose sanctions “to the fullest extent” to deprive Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of resources, as Russia warned other Latin American countries could be next.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has for months been waging a campaign of deadly raids against suspected drug-trafficking vessels off the coast of Venezuela and the Pacific coast of Latin America. He has threatened strikes on Venezuelan soil.

“The single most serious threat to this hemisphere, our own neighborhood and the United States, is from transnational terrorist and criminal groups,” US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz told the UN Security Council.

The US has increased its military presence in the region and Trump has announced a blockade of all ships subject to US sanctions.

So far this month, the US Coast Guard has intercepted two tankers in the Caribbean Sea, both fully loaded with Venezuelan crude oil. The Coast Guard is pursuing a third empty vessel that was approaching the coast of the OPEC country.

“The reality of the situation is that sanctioned oil tankers act as the main economic lifeline for Maduro and his illegal regime. Sanctioned tankers also finance the narco-terrorist group Cartel de Los Soles,” Waltz said.

Washington designated the Cartel de los Soles, or Cartel of the Suns, as a foreign terrorist organization late last month for the group’s alleged role in importing illegal drugs into the US. He accuses Maduro of leading the Cartel de los Soles. Venezuela’s government rejected what it called a “ridiculous” move to label the group “non-existent”.

“This unfolding intervention may become a template for future acts of violence against Latin American states,” Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the Security Council, citing a recent Trump strategy paper that said the US would reassert its dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

Waltz spoke after Nebenzia and did not directly respond to his remark.

China urged the United States to “immediately stop related actions and avoid further escalation of tensions,” China’s deputy UN ambassador Sun Lei told the Council.

Venezuela, backed by Russia and China, called for Tuesday’s meeting, the second to be held to escalate tensions.

The Security Council met for the first time in October, when the United States justified its actions as consistent with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which requires the Security Council to be immediately informed of any action taken by states in self-defense against armed attack.

“Let it be made clear once and for all that there is no war in the Caribbean, there is no international armed conflict, and there is no non-international, so it is absurd for the US government to try to justify its actions by applying the rules of war,” Venezuela’s UN ambassador Samuel Moncada told the Council.

“The threat is not Venezuela. The threat is the US government,” he said.