Intl community condemns US attack on Venezuela

China and the international community have expressed strong opposition after the United States captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife and US President Donald Trump said the US will "run" the Latin American country.

A spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry called on Sunday for the immediate release of Maduro, who was in custody at a New York detention center, and his wife.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the US strikes on Venezuela set "a dangerous precedent". The UN Security Council is scheduled to meet on Monday regarding the matter.

Maduro and his wife, captured from their home on a Venezuelan military base, were first taken away aboard a US warship. A plane carrying the leader then landed in New York on Saturday evening.

Maduro was questioned at the Metropolitan Detention Center in the New York City borough of Brooklyn in connection with allegations of "drug trafficking", according to media reports.

At least 40 people were killed in the US attack, including military personnel and civilians, The New York Times reported on Sunday, citing a senior Venezuelan official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Venezuela announced a state of national emergency and denounced the "military aggression", with Venezuelan Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez reportedly slamming the "kidnapping" of Maduro, saying he is "the only president of Venezuela".

China expressed grave concern over the US move.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Sunday in Beijing that China has never believed that any country has the right to act as "international police", nor does it accept that any country can style itself as an "international judge". He emphasized that the sovereignty and security of all countries must be fully protected under international law.

Noting that the sudden escalation of the situation in Venezuela has drawn widespread international attention, Wang said China has consistently opposed the use or threat of force in international relations and rejects imposing one country's will on others.

Meanwhile, China calls on the US to ensure the personal safety of Maduro and his wife, release them at once, stop toppling the government of Venezuela, and resolve issues through dialogue and negotiation, the ministry spokesperson said.

The spokesperson urged Washington to abide by international law as well as the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, and stop violating other countries' sovereignty and security.

UN Secretary-General Guterres is "deeply alarmed" by the US military action in Venezuela, his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said on Saturday.

"These developments constitute a dangerous precedent," Dujarric said in a statement.

"The ‌secretary-general continues to emphasize the importance of full respect — by all — of international law, including the UN Charter. He's deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected," Dujarric said.

Meanwhile, during a news conference on Saturday ‍at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the US president said, "We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition" in Venezuela.

Trump offered no timeline for how long such a transition of power was expected to take.

A US occupation "won't cost us anything", Trump said, because the US would be reimbursed from the "money coming out of the ground", a reference to Venezuela's oil reserves.

Trump said that US energy companies would rebuild Venezuela's broken infrastructure under US supervision.

In a letter to the UN Security Council on Saturday, Venezuela's UN Ambassador Samuel Moncada described the operation as a "deadly and treacherous US military attack" against "a country that is at peace", warning that the attack "has serious implications for regional and international peace and security".

He said the US had violated the UN Charter, citing its provision that "all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state".

In a separate letter to the Security Council's president for January, which is Somalia, Venezuela's Permanent Mission to the United Nations condemned what it called "brutal, unjustified and unilateral" US armed attacks.

Spanish Prime ‍Minister Pedro Sanchez wrote on social media platform X that Spain will not "recognize an intervention that violates international law and pushes the region toward a horizon of uncertainty and belligerence".

During a phone call on Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Belarusian Foreign Minister Maxim Ryzhenkov strongly condemned the US aggression against Venezuela, stressing that Moscow and Minsk are united in condemning actions in violation of international legal norms.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said, "The military operation that led to the capture of Nicolas Maduro violates the principle of not resorting to force", a principle that he said "underpins international law".

"International law prohibits the use of force as a means of national policy," Marc Weller, program director of London think tank Chatham House's International Law Programme, said in a post on Chatham House's website on Saturday.

Short of a UN Chapter VII mandate, force is generally lawful only "in response to an armed attack" or possibly to rescue a population facing "imminent threat of extermination", he said.

"Clearly, none of these requirements are fulfilled" by the US operation against Venezuela, he said, adding that US interests in stopping drugs, or portraying the Maduro government as a criminal enterprise, offers "no legal justification".

Roxanna Vigil, an international affairs fellow in national security at the New York-based think tank Council on Foreign Relations, noted that Trump did not indicate the US government would prioritize new elections or offer a concrete vision of a future democratic Venezuela.

"Without a clear democratic road map, the United States is beginning a new open-ended foreign occupation focused primarily on oil," Vigil wrote in a post on the think tank's website.

Agencies contributed to this report.

Contact the writers at zhaohuanxin@chinadaily.com.cn