US ‘INTERNATIONAL banditry’ was condemned by Vassily Nebenzia, the Russian delegate, speaking at the United Nations Security Council in New York yesterday afternoon.
He went on: ‘We hope you will abandon double standards and that you will not attempt to justify such an egregious act of aggression due to a fear of angering the global American gendarme which is attempting to once again rear its head.’
An emergency meeting of the Security Council was called under the agenda item ‘Threats to International Peace and Security’, following the United States attack on Venezuela on Saturday morning, in which President Maduro and his wife were kidnapped and 32 Cuban bodyguards were killed.
Colombia, backed by China and the Russian Federation, had requested the emergency meeting.
Rosemary DiCarlo, Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, delivered a statement on behalf of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, which said: ‘We meet at a grave time following the 3rd January United States military action in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
‘I am deeply concerned about the possible intensification of instability in the country, the potential impact on the region, and the precedent it may set for how relations between and among states are conducted.’
Continuing his statement in New York, the Russian delegate Nebenzia said: ‘We are particularly appalled by the unparalleled cynicism with which Washington did not even attempt to conceal the true aims of its criminal operations, namely the establishment of unbridled control over Venezuela’s national resources and assertion of their hegemonical ambitions in Latin America.
‘In this way Washington is generating fresh momentum for a neo-colonialism and for imperialism, which were repeatedly, decisively condemned and repudiated by the people of this region and by the global south as a whole.
‘Distinguished colleagues, under these circumstances it is exceedingly important for the entire international community to unite and to definitively reject the method and tools of US military foreign policy which have been demonstrated in the case of Venezuela.
‘This is the only way it is possible to compel Washington to revisit and to abandon their dangerous misconceptions. The bell now tolls across the region, ringing for every country of the western hemisphere. The bell is ringing for all UN member states and for the future of the organisation itself.
‘Failing to hear this call today is tantamount to projecting cowardice and a lack of principle, essentially blessing ongoing encroachments of international law and rejecting civilised international conduct as a whole.
‘We cannot allow the United States to proclaim itself some kind of supreme judge which alone bears the right to invade any country, to label culprits, to hand down and to enforce punishments irrespective of notions of international law, sovereignty and non-intervention.’
