Venezuela police to arrest people for supporting US strikes

The state of emergency in Venezuela, effective since the US attack, orders police to "immediately begin the national search and capture of everyone involved in the promotion or support for the armed attack," according to a text of the decree published on Monday.

The decree has been in force since Saturday, but was published in full on Monday.

Officials in the government are largely aligned with President Nicolas Maduro, who has been captured by the US, but facing repeated threats from President Donald Trump they have pivoted to possible cooperation with the White House.

Trump has threatened another strike if Venezuela does not cooperate with opening up its oil reserves, the world’s largest, and stopping drugs. Trump also threatened Colombia and Mexico and said Cuba's communist government "looks like it's ready to fall".

After first denouncing Maduro's capture as a colonial oil-grab and "kidnapping", Venezuela's acting president Delcy Rodriguez changed her tune on Sunday, saying it was a priority to have respectful relations with Washington.

"We invite the US government to work together on an agenda of cooperation," Rodriguez said. "President Donald Trump, our peoples and our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war."

The daughter of a leftist guerrilla, the 56-year-old Rodriguez has been a fiery member of the ruling "Chavista" movement – named for late leader Hugo Chavez – earning her praise as a "tigress" from Maduro.

But she is also known as a pragmatist with good connections in the private sector and a belief in economic orthodoxy. Many Venezuelans know her for the luxury clothes she likes to wear.

Just how the US would work with a post-Maduro government, full of sworn ideological enemies, is unclear. He appears to have sidelined for now the Venezuelan opposition, where many anti-Maduro activists had assumed this would be their moment.

Amid global consternation at Trump's seizure of a foreign head of state – albeit an unpopular one – the UN Security Council was due to debate its legality and implications.