Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Venezuela is fil­ing a com­plaint with the Unit­ed Na­tions and oth­er re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies re­gard­ing the re­port­ed il­le­gal in­cur­sion of US com­bat air­craft de­tect­ed on Thurs­day, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 75 kilo­me­tres from Venezuela's coasts.

Warn­ing US Sec­re­tary of War Pe­ter Hegseth to im­me­di­ate­ly "cease his reck­less, ad­ven­tur­ous, and war­like stance," a com­mu­nique from Venezuela stressed that it will not ac­cept in­tim­i­da­tion or ag­gres­sion from any for­eign pow­er - and that Venezuela will ful­ly ex­er­cise its right to de­fend na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty, in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al law.

Venezuela's Min­istries of Peo­ple’s Pow­er for De­fence and for For­eign Af­fairs is­sued the state­ment on Thurs­day night, strong­ly de­nounc­ing and re­ject­ing the il­le­gal in­cur­sion of the US com­bat air­craft.

This was de­tect­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 75 kilo­me­tres from the Venezue­lan coasts, with­in the Mai­quetía Flight In­for­ma­tion Re­gion.

The re­port­ed in­ci­dent oc­curred the same day that US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump de­clared drug car­tels to be un­law­ful com­bat­ants and that the US is now in a “non-in­ter­na­tion­al armed con­flict" with them.

This, af­ter three dead­ly strikes by US mil­i­tary forces on al­leged drug ves­sels in the re­gion. Two orig­i­nat­ed from Venezuela.

The com­mu­nique from Venezuela on the in­ci­dent in­volv­ing the US air­craft not­ed, "This ma­noeu­vre, iden­ti­fied by the Com­pre­hen­sive Aero­space De­fence Com­mand (CO­DAI), con­sti­tutes a provo­ca­tion that threat­ens na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty and con­tra­venes the norms of in­ter­na­tion­al law and the Chica­go Con­ven­tion on In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion.

"This ac­tion se­ri­ous­ly en­dan­gered the op­er­a­tional safe­ty of civ­il and com­mer­cial avi­a­tion in the Caribbean Sea; the in­ci­dent was al­so sight­ed by the Colom­bian air­line Avian­ca, adding to the of­fi­cial de­tec­tion of CO­DAI."

The state­ment added, "This se­ri­ous re­port adds to oth­er sim­i­lar il­le­gal in­cur­sions pre­vi­ous­ly record­ed and al­ready de­nounced by the Bo­li­var­i­an Gov­ern­ment, which con­sti­tutes a pat­tern of ha­rass­ment that can­not be tol­er­at­ed.

"In this re­gard, the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela de­mands that the Sec­re­tary of War of the Unit­ed States, Pe­ter Hegseth, im­me­di­ate­ly cease his reck­less, ad­ven­tur­ous, and war­like stance, which seeks to un­der­mine the zone of peace of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean and en­dan­gers re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty."

Venezuela's Gov­ern­ment stat­ed that it will take this com­plaint be­fore the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Na­tions, the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ICAO), and the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States (CELAC), "... So that the nec­es­sary mea­sures are adopt­ed to pre­vent the rep­e­ti­tion of these il­le­gal and dan­ger­ous ac­tions."

Re­it­er­at­ing that it will ful­ly ex­er­cise its right to de­fend na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty, in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al law, Venezuela stat­ed that its Bo­li­var­i­an Na­tion­al Armed Force will re­main on per­ma­nent alert with its In­te­grat­ed Aero­space De­fence Sys­tem.