Washington — US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said he has every authorisation needed for US military strikes on vessels just off the coast of Venezuela allegedly carrying illegal drugs.
Hegseth was speaking in a Fox News interview broadcast on Sunday. The US killed four people in a strike in the Caribbean Sea on Friday, at least the fourth such attack in recent weeks.
“We have every authorisation needed. These are designated as foreign terrorist organisations,” Hegseth said in an interview on Fox News’ The Sunday Briefing. He did not provide more details about the authorisation.
Washington has cited the US constitution, war powers, designation of drug cartels as foreign terrorist organisations, the right to self-defence and international law on unlawful combatants as the legal basis for the strikes.
Legal experts and some legislators argue that using military force in international waters against alleged criminals bypasses due process, violates law enforcement norms, lacks a clear legal foundation under US and international law and is not justified by the cartels’ terrorist designation.
Hegseth and President Donald Trump have not provided evidence for claims that the targeted boats were carrying drugs. Trump told Congress last week that he had determined the US to be in “a non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels, without providing any new legal rationale.
Critics say the boat strikes are a further effort by Trump to test the scope of his presidential powers. Legal experts have questioned why the military is carrying out these attacks rather than the US Coast Guard, the country’s maritime law agency.
“If you’re in our hemisphere, if you’re in the Caribbean, if you’re north of Venezuela and you want to traffic drugs to the US, you are a legitimate target of the US military,” Hegseth said.
Trump on Sunday said the US military build-up in the Caribbean had halted drug trafficking from South America.
“There are no drugs coming into the water. And we’ll look at what phase two is,” he told reporters at the White House.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Sunday told his Venezuelan counterpart that the country condemns the US strikes and is concerned about the dangers of potential US escalation in the Caribbean.
Lavrov, spoke to his Venezuelan counterpart, Yvan Gil, by telephone on Sunday, the Russian foreign ministry said.
“The ministers expressed serious concern about Washington’s escalating actions in the Caribbean Sea that are fraught with far-reaching consequences for the region,” it said.
Russia also cautioned against attempts to broadly interpret a recent UN Security Council resolution to more than double the size of an 15-month-old underfunded and understaffed international security mission combating armed gangs in Haiti.
Russia, China and Pakistan abstained from the vote on the measure put forward by the US and Panama. The remaining 13 council members voted in favour.
Reuters
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