Venezuela: On 28 August Venezuela’s permanent representative to the United Nations (UN), Samuel Moncada, met with UN Secretary General António Guterres and urged him to issue a statement calling for an end to the US naval deployment to the waters off Venezuela. According to a statement issued the same day by the Venezuelan government, US “aggressions” against Venezuela which have been “escalating in recent years…have now reached an unprecedented level of threat with the US military deployment in the Caribbean”. It highlights as cause for particular alarm, the “presence of destroyers, a guided-missile cruiser, and the deployment of a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine”. It claims that this is the first time that “military assets with nuclear capabilities have been introduced into Latin America and the Caribbean”, stating that this action is a “clear violation of the Treaty of Tlatelolco”, a 1967 international treaty that established the nuclear disarmament of Latin America and the Caribbean. The statement by Venezuela’s government urges the “UN Secretary-General to actively defend the fundamental values and principles of the UN Charter” and calls on the US government to “cease its hostile actions and respect Venezuela’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence”.
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