US to keep Venezuela oil ‘quarantine’, open to working with current leaders: Rubio

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday that the American military would continue to enforce a “quarantine” around Venezuela to block oil tankers subject to US sanctions from entering or leaving the country. The move, he said, is intended to apply what the Trump administration calls “leverage” on Venezuela’s leadership following the capture of President Nicolás Maduro.

Like President Donald Trump a day earlier, Rubio did not rule out the possibility of deploying U.S. troops to Venezuela. However, while Trump had said after the commando operation that seized Maduro that the United States planned to “run” the country and restore American oil interests, Pentagon officials said there were no U.S. forces operating inside Venezuela, and Maduro’s aides continued to appear in control on the ground.

The United States is ready to work with Venezuela’s remaining leaders if they make “the right decision,” Rubio said Sunday after an audacious US operation removed the oil-rich country’s president, Nicolas Maduro.

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“We’re going to judge everything by what they do, and we’re going to see what they do,” Rubio told CBS News’ “Face the Nation."

“I do know this: that if they don’t make the right decision, that the United States will retain multiple levers of leverage."

US commandos snatched Maduro from a compound in Caracas on Saturday in a risky operation involving jets, helicopters, warships and ground troops.

He is now in a New York detention cell awaiting a court appearance expected Monday on federal narcotrafficking and weapons charges.

Rubio appeared to significantly soften President Donald Trump’s extraordinary statements on Saturday that the United States will “run” Venezuela and that he would not be afraid to put military “boots on the ground."

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Instead, he made clear that Washington is ready to try working with Maduro’s vice president and now acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, and the rest of the ousted leader’s cabinet.

“We are going to see what happens moving forward,” he said.

“We’re going to make an assessment on the basis of what they do, not what they say publicly in the interim, not what, you know, what they’ve done in the past in many cases, but what they do moving forward."

Rubio also said that discussions of Venezuela holding elections following Nicolas Maduro’s ouster were “premature,” with Washington focused on ensuring the remaining leadership in Caracas enacts policy changes.

Asked how soon Venezuelan elections would be following Maduro’s capture by US forces on Saturday, Rubio told NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “All of that, I think, is premature at this point."

“What we are focused on right now is all of the problems we had when Maduro was there. We still have those problems in terms of them needing to be addressed. We are going to give people an opportunity to address those challenges and those problems,” he said.

With inputs from agencies