Maduro and Morales welcome global support

The presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia hailed the great show of solidarity from across the world in Caracas on Sunday.

Bolivian President Evo Morales was the surprise guest on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's weekly TV programme, Sundays with Maduro.

Hundreds of national and international delegates to the Todos Somos Venezuela (We are all Venezuela) conference rode the 2-mile cable car to the 8,000 foot summit of Mount Waraira Repano, overlooking the capital, as the audience for the live broadcast.

Mr Maduro said US President Donald Trump's threat of military action against Venezuela “is a threat to the whole world.”

Washington has since imposed serious financial sanctions over the election of the new National Constituent Assembly (ANC) in the face of deadly riots and a boycott by the US-backed opposition.

Mr Morales hailed last week's resumption of internationally-mediated talks with the Democratic Unity Roundtable (Mud) in the Dominican Republic after four months of riots that left 124 dead.

“Our struggle is justified to defend our natural resources,” the Bolivian president said. “Whatever the pretext for military action, it is intended to rob our natural resources.”

He said Mud claims the convening of the ANC is an attack on democracy and a move towards dictatorship merely served as an excuse for US intervention.

“The Constituent Assembly will guarantee peace in Venezuela,” he said.

“We are with the people, with reason, with democracy... struggling for sovereignty.”

“Between imperialism and capitalism, the struggle continues.”

Mr Maduro said the opposition's plan was to “set the country on fire, fracture the military,” and like in Libya and Syria “justify bombing and occupation.”

“We crushed this plan. They failed,” he said.

And the Venezuelan president slammed the “cowardly left” around the world who have turned against his country's “Bolivarian Revolution”

“It scares them to hear the word Venezuela,” he said, mocking them as “traitors in red jackets who call themselves Chavistas. 'I'm a Chavista, that's why I'm against Maduro'.”

The mustachioed former bus driver even joked about his passing resemblance to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

Reminding viewers of the approaching 100th anniversary of the birth of the Soviet Union in 1917, he declared: "Viva the revolution! Viva Lenin!"

Mr Maduro gave a special welcome to visitors from African nations, saying “we are Afro-Americans here.”

Democratic Republic of Congo representative Roland Lumumba, the son of colonial liberation leader Patrice Lumumba – overthrown by a coup and assassinated a year after independence – called for the building of new institutions between the two continents.

He said anti-imperialists must not wait for the neo-colonial powers to act against them. “We must take this opportunity to anticipate their actions.”

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