US will not govern Venezuela but will press for changes through blockade – Rubio

US secretary of state Marco Rubio has suggested Washington will not take a day-to-day role in governing Venezuela other than enforcing an existing “oil quarantine” on the country.

It represents a turnaround after President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that the US would be running Venezuela after the removal of leader Nicolas Maduro.

Mr Rubio’s statements on TV talk shows seemed designed to temper concerns about whether the assertive American action to achieve regime change might produce a prolonged foreign intervention or failed attempt at nation-building.

They stood in contrast to Mr Trump’s broad but vague claims that the US would at least temporarily “run” the oil-rich nation, comments that suggested some sort of governing structure under which Caracas would be controlled by Washington.

Mr Rubio offered a more nuanced take, saying the US would continue to enforce an oil quarantine that was already in place on sanctioned tankers before Maduro was removed from power early on Saturday and using that leverage as a means to bring about policy changes in Venezuela.

“And so that’s the sort of control the president is pointing to when he says that,” Mr Rubio said on CBS’s Face The Nation.

“We continue with that quarantine, and we expect to see that there will be changes, not just in the way the oil industry is run for the benefit of the people, but also so that they stop the drug trafficking.”

The blockade on sanctioned oil tankers — some of which have been seized by the US — “remains in place, and that’s a tremendous amount of leverage that will continue to be in place until we see changes that not just further the national interest of the United States, which is number one, but also that lead to a better future for the people of Venezuela”, he added.

Maduro landed late on Saturday afternoon at a small airport in New York City’s northern suburbs after the middle-of-the-night operation that extracted him and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their home in a military base in Caracas — an act that Maduro’s government called “imperialist”.

The couple faces US charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.

The dramatic seizure of the Maduros capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on Venezuela’s autocratic leader and months of secret planning, resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Legal experts raised questions about the lawfulness of the operation, which was done without congressional approval.

Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, demanded that the US free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader as her nation’s high court named her interim president.

After arriving at the airport, Maduro was flown by helicopter to Manhattan, where a convoy of law enforcement vehicles, including an armoured car, was waiting to take him to a nearby US Drug Enforcement Administration office.

A video posted on social media by a White House account showed a smiling Maduro being escorted through that office by two DEA agents grasping his arms.

He is due to make his first appearance on Monday in Manhattan’s federal court.

Mr Trump said on Sunday that Ms Rodriguez could “pay a very big price” if she does not do what he thinks is right for the South American country.

That contrasted with his comments on Saturday when he said Mr Rubio had spoken with her and she was willing to do what the US thinks is needed to improve the standard of living in Venezuela.

Mr Trump told The Atlantic that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro”. The president told the New York Post in an interview on Saturday that the US would not need to station troops in Venezuela if she “does what we want”.

The governments of Spain, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay said in a statement that US involvement in Venezuela is “an extremely dangerous precedent for peace and regional security and puts the civilian population at risk”.

In a statement released jointly by the governments, they expressed their “concern about any attempt at government control, administration, or external appropriation of natural or strategic resources”.

These actions are “incompatible with international law and threaten the political, economic and social stability of the region”, they added.

They called for dialogue, negotiation and respect for the will of the Venezuelan people to resolve the situation “without external interference and in accordance with international law”.

The Danish ambassador to the US said his government expects the US to respect territorial integrity of Greenland, after Katie Miller, wife of White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, posted a map of Greenland coloured in stars and stripes and with the written note “SOON”.

“We do need Greenland, absolutely,” Mr Trump told The Atlantic on Sunday.

“Just a friendly reminder about the US and the Kingdom of Denmark,” ambassador Jesper Moller Sorensen wrote in his post on X responding to Miller. “We are close allies and should continue to work together as such. US security is also Greenland’s and Denmark’s security. Greenland is already part of Nato.”

Mr Trump called repeatedly for US jurisdiction over Greenland during his presidential transition and in the early months of his second term, causing anxiety in Denmark and Greenland, which possesses natural resources including oil, gas, and rare earth elements. Denmark is responsible for the autonomous territory’s foreign affairs and defence.