Venezuelan Navy marine patrol vessel AB Guaiqueri (PO-11). Photo: FANB/File photo.
Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—Venezuela’s Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello has stated that Venezuelan military forces have been deployed throughout the Caribbean Sea territory belonging to Venezuela, in order to protect and guarantee sovereignty amid new military provocations from the US empire.
Cabello made this statement Thursday, August 14, after being asked about the recently heightened bounty enacted by the US empire on President Nicolás Maduro—based on falsified links to drug cartels—and the Pentagon’s deployment in the southern Caribbean Sea to supposedly confront Latin American drug traffickers.
According to two sources briefed on the decision, interviewed by Reuters, the US empire has ordered the deployment of air and naval forces in the southern Caribbean Sea to allegedly confront threats from Latin American drug cartels. The sources, who spoke on “condition of anonymity,” said the US colony’s Department of Defense has begun ordering the deployment of US imperial air and naval forces to the area. The Trump administration has deployed at least two warships in recent months to allegedly assist with border security and counter-drug trafficking efforts.
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Venezuela denies drug links
Minister Cabello forcefully rejected the recent accusations from the US empire, emphasizing that to be considered a cartel, a drug must be produced, processed, and transited. According to a recent report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Venezuela is free of drug production. The report also revealed no processing laboratories for illicit substances exist in Venezuela, nor does the nation serve as a transit point for drugs.
“We are also deployed throughout the Caribbean, which belongs to us, our sea, which is Venezuelan territory,” he emphasized. “The only drug cartel that operates in plain sight is the DEA, which reports directly to the US government. That’s the truth. The rest is fabrications.”
According to a New York Times article last week, which also cites people familiar with the matter, the president of the US empire, Donald Trump, secretly signed an executive order authorizing the deployment of the US entity’s military forces to combat groups in the region supposedly linked to drug trafficking after they were added to Washington’s list of terrorist groups.
The US regime, while announcing the increased bounty to “capture” President Maduro, also linked him without any evidence to the Sinaloa Cartel, Tren de Aragua, and the nonexistent Cartel de los Soles.
Special for Orinoco Tribune by staff
OT/JRE/AU
