Venezuela’s Maduro Orders Review of Relations with U.S. after Snowden Revelations

“An integral review is on and I will announce the measures we will take for the U.S. to apologize to the people of Venezuela for the grievance caused,” Maduro told Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez during a campaign event.

Rodriguez has been asked to summon Thursday U.S. commercial head in Caracas (the top-most U.S. diplomatic representative in the country) to deliver a protest note regarding the spying revealed Wednesday through a document by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, currently under asylum in Russia.

“U.S. has had the intention of sabotaging the oil industry and overthrow the Venezuelan government in order to come and appropriate our oil, which exclusively belongs to the Venezuelan people,” Maduro claimed.

The Snowden document, published by Telesur broadcaster, says the NSA spied on hundreds of PDVSA executives, including the company’s former president Rafael Ramirez (2004-2014), currently Venezuela’s representative to the United Nations.

The document says that the NSA accessed at least 10,000 PDVSA employees’ profiles, including their email addresses and telephone numbers.

It also accessed information on another 900 profiles that included, among other data, email passwords and usernames.