Washington, DC [US], January 29 (ANI): US Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the capture of former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro before a Senate committee, arguing that the operation did not amount to an act of war and portraying it as a strategic necessity for the Trump administration.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, Rubio laid out Washington's rationale behind the January 3 capture of Maduro, who remains detained in New York while facing drug trafficking and narco-terrorism conspiracy charges.

At the outset of the hearing, Rubio characterised the operation as a 'strategic' move and dismissed concerns raised by United Nations experts over international law. He described Venezuela under Maduro as a 'base of operation for virtually every competitor, adversary and enemy in the world', citing alleged links to Iran, Russia and Cuba. '[Having Maduro in power] was an enormous strategic risk for the United States, not halfway around the world, not on another continent, but in the hemisphere in which we all live, and it was having dramatic impacts on us, but also on Colombia and on the Caribbean Basin and all sorts of other places,' Rubio told lawmakers.

'It was an untenable situation, and it had to be addressed, and now the question becomes what happens moving forward,' he said.

Rubio said Washington had three objectives in Venezuela, culminating in 'a phase of transition where we are left with a friendly, stable, prosperous Venezuela - and democratic'.

He also defended US President Donald Trump's decision to continue engaging with officials surrounding Maduro, including interim President Delcy Rodriguez, rather than immediately backing an opposition takeover.

According to Rubio, the first priority was preventing civil war while seeking to 'establish direct, honest, respectful, but very direct and honest conversations with the people who today control the elements of that nation'.

He added that the second objective focused on a 'period of recovery ... and that is the phase in which you want to see a normalised oil industry'.

During the hearing, Senator Jeanne Shaheen raised concerns about the cost of the operation, citing outside estimates that put the military action and ongoing naval blockade at 1 billion.

'So it's no wonder that so many of my constituents are asking why the president is spending so much time focused on Venezuela instead of the cost of living and their kitchen table economic concerns?'