US Navy conducts war games to challenge Venezuela off its waters

The US Navy says it has conducted an operation off Venezuela’s coastline, saying it wanted to challenge what it called the Latin American nation’s "excessive maritime claims in international waters".

Caracas has already condemned the presence of the US warship off its coast, describing it as "a deliberate act of provocation."

The USS William P. Lawrence conducted "a freedom of navigation operation to challenge Venezuela's excessive maritime claim in international waters," a spokesman for the Southern Command, responsible for US military operations in the Caribbean as well as South and Central America, said on Thursday 

Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said the positioning of the guided missile destroyer off his country's coast was "an intention to intimidate" Caracas.

The US warship, he said, was inside the 24-nautical mile Venezuelan Contiguous Zone, "at a distance of 16.1 nautical miles from the Venezuelan coast."

"This is clearly a deliberate act of provocation, which is also erratic and childish," Arreaza added.

US-Venezuela tensions have escalated in recent months, with the Trump administration supporting opposition leader Juan Guaido and trying to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

The US military said in April that it was deploying warships near Venezuela to stop what it claimed an increase in “organized crime.”

Maduro called on the international community late last month to rally against unilateral US sanctions against various countries around the world and characterized Washington as the “most serious threat” to global peace and stability.

ME