Trump allies, adversaries slam Venezuela attack at UN meeting

The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on Monday after an audacious US military operation in Venezuela over the weekend to capture leader Nicolas Maduro, with the United Nations' top official warning that America might have violated international law.

Before the UN's most powerful body, both allies and adversaries blasted President Donald Trump's intervention and him signalling the possibility of expanding military action to countries like Colombia and Mexico over drug trafficking accusations.

He also re-upped his threat to take over the Danish territory of Greenland for the sake of US security interests. In a statement, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply concerned that rules of international law had not been respected with regard to the January 3 military action”.

Denmark, a fellow member of NATO with jurisdiction over the vast mineral-rich island of Greenland, echoed Guterres' concerns, saying the “inviolability of borders was not up for negotiation”. “No state should seek to influence political outcomes in Venezuela through the use of threat of force or through other means inconsistent with international law,” said Christina Markus Lassen, Danish ambassador to the UN.

Colombian Ambassador Leonor Zalabata said the raid was reminiscent of “the worst interference in our area in the past”. “Democracy cannot be defended or promoted through violence and coercion,” she said.

Russia's ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said, “We cannot allow the US to proclaim itself as some kind of a supreme judge, which alone bears the right to invade any country, label culprits, hand down and enforce punishments irrespective of notions of international law, sovereignty and nonintervention,” he said. But US envoy Mike Waltz defended the action as a justified and “surgical law enforcement operation”.