\n<\/p>\n
The UK is \u201cnot entirely clear\u201d what it means for the US to be in charge of Venezuela, the chief secretary to the prime minister has said, urging a move towards a peaceful transition of power.<\/p>\n
Darren Jones said the UK would wait to determine whether there had been a breach of international law after the US attacked the Venezuelan capital and captured its president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, and his wife on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Trump told a press conference on Saturday in Florida that the US would run the country until it could do a \u201csafe, proper and judicious transition\u201d.<\/p>\n
Asked on Sky News if that was tantamount to colonialism, Jones said the UK was \u201cnot in favour of colonialism and we\u2019re not entirely clear yet what President Trump meant by those comments\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the UK would not weigh in on what should happen to the government of Venezuela, but said that it should \u201cmove quickly\u201d towards a transition of power that reflected the will of the country\u2019s people.<\/p>\n
<\/span>A photo posted to Donald Trump\u2019s Truth Social account purporting to show Nicol\u00e1s Maduro onboard the USS Iwo Jima, after US special forces captured him in Caracas.<\/span> Photograph: White House Press Office Handout\/EPA<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s for the Americans now and for Venezuela to set out what happens in the coming days,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the important thing now \u2026 is that we are quickly able to get to a point where we can get to a peaceful transition to a president in Venezuela that has the support of the people of Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n He repeated assurances given by Keir Starmer that the UK had no involvement and was not informed of the plan to strike Venezuela. \u201cSo it\u2019s not for us to judge whether it\u2019s been a success or not. That\u2019s for the Americans to speak to.\u201d<\/p>\n On Saturday, Starmer said he wanted to speak to Trump directly before making any judgment on the US\u2019s actions. \u201cI don\u2019t shy away from this. I\u2019ve been a lifelong advocate of international law and the importance of compliance with international law,\u201d he told the BBC.<\/p>\n <\/span>Celebrations and protests take place around the world after Venezuela strikes \u2013\u00a0video<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBut I want to ensure that I\u2019ve got all the facts at my disposal, and we haven\u2019t got that at the moment, and we need to get that before we come to a decision about the consequences in relation to the actions that have been taken.\u201d<\/p>\n Starmer is likely to face an urgent question in the Commons when it returns on Monday. The Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, criticised Starmer\u2019s hesitancy on Sunday, saying it would give Trump licence for hostile acts against other sovereign countries.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst Venezuela, next Greenland?\u201d he posted on X in response to a post from the wife of Trump\u2019s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, that showed the American flag superimposed on Greenland with the word \u201cSOON\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t suck up to bullies like Trump, he will just see it as a sign of weakness. Keir Starmer needs to get on the phone to our European allies including the Danish PM, and show a united front against Trump\u2019s threats.\u201d<\/p>\n Greenland\u2019s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, called Katie Miller\u2019s post \u201cdisrespectful\u201d, while Denmark\u2019s ambassador to the US, Jesper M\u00f8ller S\u00f8rensen, said \u201cwe expect full respect for the territorial integrity\u201d of Denmark.<\/p>\n Philippe Sands KC, a human rights lawyer who has known Starmer for several decades, said it was clear the action was \u201cmanifestly illegal under international law, and cannot plausibly or by any reasonable standard be characterised as a law enforcement action\u201d.<\/p>\n Sands said Starmer\u2019s failure to condemn the action \u201cspeaks volumes\u201d. \u201cHaving lived through the catastrophe and criminality of the Iraq war in 2003, which Mr Trump himself has condemned, I would hope that Keir Starmer sticks to the principles of legality to which he says he is so firmly committed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n <\/span>Darren Jones and Keir Starmer. Jones repeated assurances given by Starmer on Saturday that the UK had no involvement and was not informed of the plan to strike Venezuela.<\/span> Photograph: Simon Dawson\/No 10 Downing Street<\/p>\n The deputy leader of Reform UK defended Trump\u2019s actions and said it was not comparable to Russia\u2019s decision to invade Ukraine and attempt to capture Volodymyr Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n Richard Tice said: \u201cIt\u2019s clearly in accordance with US domestic law. Lawyers will argue, of course, about UN article 51. The reality is that an enemy of the west has been removed. The challenge now \u2026 is to ensure that you don\u2019t end up with a vacuum that slides into what happened in Iraq and Libya; that\u2019s the key challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n He said the comparisons with Russia \u201care chalk and cheese; there is no comparison whatsoever\u201d, and \u201cPutin has never said he was going to give Ukraine back to the Ukrainians \u2026 He wanted to invade the whole of Ukraine and to keep it.\u201d<\/p>\n Tice added: \u201cThe US constitution gives the right to the commander-in-chief, the US president, to act in the self-defence of US citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n The shadow foreign secretary, Priti Patel, said it was clear that Maduro did not have a mandate to remain in power and that there were \u201cpolitical questions about what that pathway to democracy is going to be for Venezuela\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The UK is \u201cnot entirely clear\u201d what it means for the US to be in charge of Venezuela, the chief secretary to the prime minister has said, urging a move towards a peaceful transition of power. Darren Jones said the UK would wait to determine whether there had been a breach of international law after<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[10296,2851,2642,4723],"class_list":{"0":"post-40269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-clear","9":"tag-means","10":"tag-run","11":"tag-venezuela"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}