Culled from BBC with Additional Reports
The UK Conservative leader Kem Badenoch has supported the US military action in Venezuela, saying it was the right thing to do “morally.”
Although the Conservative leader told the BBC that while she did not understand the legal basis for Donald Trump’s operation to remove President Nicolás Maduro from the country, he was overseeing a “brutal regime” and she was “glad he’s gone”.
She added that the move did “raise serious questions about the rules-based order”.
The UK has refused to speak empathically against Donald Trump’s action, especially government has so far avoided criticising whether it breached international law, instead arguing that Maduro was an “illegitimate president”
Nevertheless, some Labour MPs and opposition parties including the Liberal Democrats, Green Party and SNP have called on the government to condemn Trump’s actions and brand them illegal.
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme quoted Badenoch as saying the US action was “extraordinary” but she understood why it was taken.
“Where the legal certainty is not yet clear, morally, I do think it was the right thing to do,” she said.
The Tory leader, who spent her childhood in Nigeria before moving back to the UK at the age of 16, added: “I grew up under a military dictatorship, so I know what it’s like to have someone like Maduro in charge.”
Badenoch also said that it was right to tell Trump not to intervene in Greenland because “there is a big difference between democratic states” and the “gangster state in Venezuela”.
“What happens in Greenland is up to Denmark and the people of Greenland,” she added.
Few days back Donald Trump has repeated his threats to annex Greenland – a semi-autonomous Danish territory which has a strategic location and is rich in minerals – arguing it is vital for US national security.
The UK has issued a joint statement with the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Denmark insisting it is for Denmark and Greenland alone to decide on matters concerning the territory’s future.
Maduro and his wife were captured from Venezuela’s capital Caracas on Saturday in an operation by US forces which also saw strikes on military bases in the country.
The couple have been taken to New York where they have been charged with weapon and drug offences, accused of enriching themselves from a violent crime ring smuggling cocaine to the US.
Maduro has long rejected the allegations as a pretext to force him from power and both have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.
Trump pledged to”run the country” until there is a “proper” transition of power, with Venezuela’s Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez sworn in as interim president.
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