Venezuela prepares formal response to Trump 'military option'

CARACAS - 12 August 2017: Venezuela's government on Saturday prepared to deliver a stinging rebuke of U.S. President Donald Trump after he said the United States was considering a "military option" regarding the crisis-stricken country.

The South American nation on Friday said Trump had engaged in "an act of craziness" by making the brief statement, in which he did not offer details on what such a military intervention would mean.

Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza was scheduled to deliver a formal response in an address to the country's diplomatic corps at 11:00 a.m. EST (1500 GMT).

Information Minister Vladimir Villegas on Saturday tweeted a picture of the Statue of Liberty holding a machine gun instead of a torch, and a link to an article describing, "A Chronology of U.S. 'Military Options' in Latam and the Caribbean."

President Nicolas Maduro has faced withering criticism from around the world for leading the making of an all-powerful legislature that critics call the creation of a dictatorship.

Maduro says it will bring peace after more than four months of violent opposition street demonstrations that have left more than 120 people dead amid an economic crisis of triple-digit inflation and chronic shortages of food and medicine.

The ruling Socialist Party has for years accused the United States of plotting an invasion as a way of controlling its oil reserves, which are the world's largest, through a military intervention similar to the Iraq war.

Previous U.S. administrations had brushed this off as politicized bravado meant to distract from Venezuela's domestic problems.

Under former President Barack Obama, the State Department in 2015 made quiet diplomatic overtures that led to several high-level meetings. The effort ultimately foundered as Maduro hardened his stance against opposition critics.

Maduro's adversaries were largely mum about Trump's pronouncements. Opposition leaders, whom Maduro accuses of being stooges for Washington, are generally careful to distance themselves from U.S. involvement in Venezuelan issues.

Many in the opposition have pushed back against informal Trump administration proposals to ban U.S. imports of Venezuelan crude, insisting such measures will allow Maduro to blame the United States for the country's collapsing socialist economy.