Venezuela defense minister reaffirms military's loyalty to Maduro

By Vivian Sequera

CARACAS (Reuters) -Venezuela's Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino on Tuesday reaffirmed the military's "absolute loyalty" to President Nicolas Maduro, amid an ongoing dispute over the country's contested presidential election results.

The comments came after opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez and leader Maria Corina Machado urged members of the armed forces "to stand at the side of the people," in a letter published on Monday.

"We ratify our absolute loyalty to citizen Nicolas Maduro Moros," Padrino, an army general, said during a broadcast on state television, where he was flanked by other top brass of the military and the police.

These "fatuous and irrational calls seek to break our unity and institutionality, but they will never achieve it," Padrino added.

The opposition maintain Gonzalez won more than 6 million votes in the July 28 election, compared to 2.7 million for Maduro, and have published online a copy of ballots from 30,000 voting machines.

The government says it also has copies of the ballots but has not yet published them, nor has the country's electoral authority, whose website has been down since the early hours of July 29.

The electoral authority, who the opposition says favors the ruling socialists, has said Maduro was reelected with around 51% of the vote, beating Gonzalez.

An official from the U.S State Department said on Tuesday it would have been "nearly impossible" for the opposition to fake the voting tallies it has published.

"We have examined this evidence and have determined that it would be nearly impossible to falsify the tallies that were rapidly compiled and uploaded," Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs Mark Wells told journalists.

Wells did not respond to questions about whether and when there would be new U.S sanctions on Venezuela, and said Washington had not set a deadline for possible talks between the government in Caracas and opposition.

Yvan Gil, Venezuela's foreign minister, said in a post on X that the far right was seeking to "undermine" Venezuelan democracy and install a U.S puppet.

After Gonzalez and Machado published their letter, attorney general Tarek Saab announced a criminal probe against both of them for inciting members of the military and the police to break the law.

"Fear is not going to paralyze us, we are going to overcome it as we have done until now and we will not leave the streets," Machado said in an audio message posted on X on Tuesday.

The Venezuelan president's assertion that he won a third term in last month's vote triggered protests and accusations of fraud, with opposition leaders insisting Gonzalez won and that Maduro should stand down.

(Reporting by Vivian Sequera; Writing by Oliver Griffin; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Rosalba O'Brien)