President Nicolás Maduro said Tuesday that he would expel the two most senior diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, giving them 48 hours to leave the country, in a sharp escalation of bilateral tensions.
"Enough of conspiracies. It seems impossible to have respectful relations with the USA government", Maduro said.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was elected to a second term Sunday with 6.2 million votes, beating out his closest rival Henri Falcon, who garnered just 1.9 million votes.
The election was boycotted by the main opposition parties and widely criticized by the global community, including the United States, which denounced it as a "sham".
He gave no details of the accusations, but said the U.S. Embassy had been meddling in military, economic and political issues, and vowed to present evidence shortly. "Enough conspiracies", Maduro said.
But despite the frequent clashes, Maduro had seemed little inclined to declare Robinson persona non grata, as he and his mentor, the late Hugo Chavez, did several times previously to US diplomats.
Maduro does run an increasingly autocratic government that's been hit by United States sanctions, however, so that makes him easy to relate to for Pyongyang.
The foreign ministry earlier lashed out at the sanctions, accusing the United States of a "political and financial lynching".
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"There is no unilateral measure, no pressure from any foreign power that can intimidate the Venezuelan people", the top diplomat stated.
Hundreds of thousands have fled the country to escape the growing deprivation.
US Vice President Mike Pence decried the election as "neither free nor fair".
Caracas is facing increasing global isolation, with the United States, the European Union and the 14 countries of the Lima Group, which includes Argentina, Brazil and Canada, refusing to recognize the election result.
Venezuela has suffered hyperinflation, chronic shortages of food and basic goods, and a collapse of public services as the country's oil revenues plummeted amid reduced petroleum output and, until recently, low crude prices.
Maduro first took office in 2013 after his predecessor Hugo Chavez died, and is set to govern Venezuela for another six-year term, from January 2019 to 2025.
Lucena, from the same leftist party as Maduro, rejected allegations by the opposition and many countries that the polls were not legitimate.
US Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan warned of the possibility of an oil embargo against Venezuela.
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