– Lukas Coch/AAP/dpa – Archives
MADRID, December 19 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio, assured this Friday that the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is actively cooperating with armed groups linked to drug trafficking such as the FARC dissidents or the National Liberation Army (ELN), in Colombia, to export drugs to the United States.
“There are entities dedicated to drug trafficking that operate openly and with the cooperation of the Maduro regime to send drugs like cocaine to the United States through the Caribbean, creating a very serious security situation in many countries,” Rubio said during an appearance before the media on the occasion of his review of the events of the year.
At the press conference, Rubio said that “these criminal terrorist groups” represent “the most significant threat in the region” and to this end, the United States has engaged in security negotiations with Latin American countries, with different results.
“We have governments that cooperate, like Panama, Costa Rica or El Salvador,” said Rubio before assuring that he even maintains “very good relations with the Colombian security teams, as unusual as its president is,” in reference to Gustavo Petro.
“What our country simply seeks is the security of the hemisphere,” added Rubio, who did not explicitly comment on Trump’s current blockade on the export of Venezuelan crude oil.
The reason Venezuela is receiving so much attention, Rubio judged, “is because Venezuela is a country with an illegitimate regime, which not only does not cooperate with us, but openly cooperates with criminal and terrorist elements,” the secretary of state said before mentioning Iran and Hezbollah, as he has commented on other occasions.
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