The European Union (EU) has urged restraint and respect for Venezuela’s sovereignty following the United States’ capture of President Nicolás Maduro.
In a declaration endorsed by 26 of the EU’s 27 member-countries, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, urged “calm and restraint by all actors” and emphasi#ed that “principles of international law and the UN Charter must be upheld,” particularly by members of the UN Security Council.
The statement also stressed that drug trafficking should be tackled “in full respect of… territorial integrity and sovereignty,” while calling for the will of the Venezuelan people to be respected.
However, Hungary refused to sign the statement. Its far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is known to be a close ally of the US President Donald Trump, whose administration ordered the operation that led to Maduro’s capture on Saturday.
Meanwhile, outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York, where Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were being held, around 200 protesters gathered on Sunday to denounce the US strike on Venezuela.
“We’re out here today to say that we’re against war and we’re against this unilateral military action,” one demonstrator told Sky’s US correspondent.
The protest is among a growing wave of global reactions to Washington’s intervention, which has drawn both praise and outrage across international capitals.