Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared on Monday that the U.S. will pull all the remaining diplomatic personnel from Venezuela this week because of the deteriorating political climate in the country.
“The U.S. will withdraw all remaining personnel from @usembassyve this week. This decision reflects the deteriorating situation in Venezuela as well as the conclusion that the presence of U.S. diplomatic staff at the embassy has become a constraint on U.S. policy,” Pompeo tweeted.
This decision by the Secretary of State came just a few hours after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accused President Donald Trump of plotting to remove him from power by crippling the nation’s power system. Much of the South American country has been without power since last Thursday, resulting in the death of over 20 people.
“The United States’ imperialist government ordered this attack,” Maduro claimed, adding, “They came with a strategy of war of the kind that only these criminals – who have been to war and have destroyed the people of Iraq, of Libya, of Afghanistan and of Syria – think up,” according to one news source.
Maduro also said that U.S. plotted this “attack” in collaboration with the opposition to create “a state of despair, of widespread want and of conflict.”
Maduro, however, said that this attempt will not succeed.
“Victory belongs to us. What you can be certain of is that sooner rather later, in the coming days, we will win this battle definitively … We will win — and we will do it for Venezuela. We will do it for our homeland. We will do it for you … we will do it because of our people’s right to happiness,” he declared.
Venezuela’s opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, said, “We are in the middle of a catastrophe that is not the result of a hurricane, that is not the result of a tsunami. It’s the product of the inefficiency, the incapability, the corruption of a regime that doesn’t care about the lives of Venezuelans,” CNN reported.
“There is no service in the hospitals. These were the best hospitals in the country. If we are in the capital, what is it like kilometers inside Venezuela where there hasn’t been or there has been very little gasoline with periodic cuts in electricity, without basic goods, with inefficient public transportation? You can say with all responsibility that Venezuela has already collapsed,” he added.
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