Venezuelan diplomats expelled by U.S. in retaliation

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Three Venezuelan diplomats were ordered out of the United States on Tuesday in response to their government's decision to boot three U.S. officials from Venezuela, including the highest-ranking U.S. envoy in the country.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced the expulsion of U.S. charge d'affaires Kelly Keiderling and two other diplomats Monday, accusing them of conspiring with "the extreme right" to sabotage the South American country's economy and power grid.

U.S. officials vigorously denied the allegation and had hinted Tuesday afternoon there might be a retaliatory expulsion of Venezuelan envoys.

In a news conference in Caracas, Keiderling said she and the other diplomats would leave Venezuela on Wednesday before the 48-hour deadline expired. "The work of the embassy will continue. It doesn't matter very much if it is one person or another" doing it, she said.
She said that if the accusation against them was that they had met with Venezuelans then "it is true. We met with Venezuelans."
"These meetings with civil society can be with (the independent election monitoring group) Sumate, they can be with a group of women, with mothers who have lost children or with an environmental group that wants to lobby for cleaning a park," she said. "If we aren't talking with these people, we aren't doing our jobs."
Expelled with Keiderling, the top embassy official in the absence of an ambassador, were consular officer David Moo and Elizabeth Hoffman, who works in the embassy's political section.