The mercenary plan against Venezuela prepared from Colombia and the United States (US) had the consent and support of drug trafficking, said the Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López on Thursday, during a roundtable discussion in Caracas.
«They intend to take over Venezuela to make it a platform for drug trafficking, which is an important financial link for the US», he said.
He emphasized that the use of drug trafficking for the provision of logistical elements, escape routes, transportation, training zones, purchase of weapons and artillery vehicles is clear to carry out these plans of incursion against the nation.
«This drug trafficking bridge wants to be opened in Venezuela with the consent of treacherous politicians, of a minority sector of treacherous Venezuelan politics with mercenaries, something that is unacceptable», he observed.
Padrino López confirmed that this plan is strongly rejected by the entire Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB), while it also aimed at supplanting the Venezuelan Armed Forces by a band of foreign terrorists indefinitely and without any limit for their actions to attack military and civilian targets.
«This cannot be classified as an invasion, but it was a military operation prepared in foreign territory, with foreign financing, with equipment supplied by powers such as the US and the Colombian government with very well-stated objectives», lashed Padrino López.
He made the point that today 39 FANB deserters have been captured while trying to enter Venezuela through the Colombian border, «that we have to assume that they also came to fulfill a task as part of the general scheme of a raid», he said.
«Producing an attack of this magnitude where we are going to be stripped of our sovereignty, doing so at this time is a double crime, because even the United Nations has called for a ceasefire», he said.
He recalled that the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, has called for a humanitarian agreement among all the opposition factors, «and that is the exercise of politics. We have to put politics on the table again, make a one-man confrontation that allows political pluralism, dialogue, understanding», he stressed.
He considered that whoever assumes the opposite should consider himself an enemy of the homeland, «As well as all those who signed that contract, the deserters who came to venture into Venezuela, this is how we see the FANB, and I propose politics to prevail, as it has been insistently called for by President Nicolás Maduro», he pointed out.
He indicated that this whole issue has been debated in depth throughout the FANB and its institutions, and it also meant the importance of continuing to strengthen the civic-military union in this scenario, as conceived by Commander Hugo Chávez and has been promoting the President Maduro, with the relaunch of the concept of the Bolivarian National Militia.
