Maduro defiant in face of US deployment

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Monday that eight US military vessels with 1,200 missiles were targeting his country, which he declared to be in a state of “maximum readiness to defend” itself.

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The United States, which accuses Mr Maduro of heading a drug cartel, has announced a deployment of warships to the south Caribbean in what it labelled an anti-drug trafficking operation. It has made no invasion threat.

Yet Mr Maduro railed at a meeting with international media in Caracas on Monday against “the greatest threat that has been seen on our continent in the last 100 years’ in the form of “eight military ships with 1,200 missiles anda submarine targeting Venezuela.”

One of the ships, a guided missile cruiser, was spotted going through the Panama Canal from the Pacific to the Caribbean on Friday night.

Mr Maduro said that “in response to maximum military pressure, we have declared maximum readiness to defend Venezuela.”