PARIS (dpa-AFX) – French President Emmanuel Macron has criticized the “method” used by the USA to arrest Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. This is “neither supported nor approved” by France, Macron said during the cabinet meeting in Paris, as government spokeswoman Maud Bregeon said. The government spokeswoman did not specify whether Macron was criticizing the US attack as such or just the way in which Maduro was arrested. “We defend international law and the freedom of peoples,” the president said.
Macron’s comments follow some irritation in France over the president’s initial reaction to the US attack on Venezuela. Without any criticism of the US actions, Macron said on Saturday that the Venezuelan people could be happy to have been freed from Maduro’s dictatorship. Macron wrote on Platform X that he had seriously violated the dignity of his own people.
Initially, only French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot criticized the US approach. “The military operation that led to the arrest of Nicolás Maduro violates the principle of non-use of force on which international law is based,” Barrot said on X on Saturday. “France recalls that no lasting political solution can be imposed from outside and that sovereign peoples alone decide their future.”
The different perspectives of the President and the Foreign Minister on what was happening in Venezuela caused astonishment in France. The minister’s statement was agreed with the president, said the government spokeswoman./evs/DP/jha
