By Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON, June 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. military has established a robust footprint of U.S. forces in and around Venezuela to support relief operations, with more than 900 personnel inside the country and another roughly 800 in Caribbean hubs Puerto Rico and Curacao, the top U.S. general for Latin America told Reuters.
General Francis Donovan, the commander of U.S. Southern Command, said U.S. forces had participated in search-and-rescue operations, helped get the airport up and running and mobilized air and naval assets to allow for the arrival of humanitarian relief after last week's devastating earthquakes.
He said the U.S. military had also deployed at least four or five MQ-9 Reaper drones over Venezuela, which, along with a fusion cell in Miami, is bolstering the intelligence picture for Venezuelan authorities.
"We're using some of the same assets we might use to track hemispheric threats (to) now ensure roadways are open and ensure that we know where the damaged buildings are," Donovan said, adding some of those insights may sometimes be harder for Venezuelan authorities to see "from the ground level."
It is a remarkable turn of events for the U.S. military, which on January 3 carried out a raid to grab Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro and fly him to New York to stand trial on drug trafficking charges. Maduro denies any wrongdoing.
In the past month, the U.S. military carried out a strike that killed the leader of Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua, an action taken in coordination with Venezuelan authorities.
"January 3rd's not that long ago. And just think about how this relationship has transitioned," Donovan said.
Venezuela was hit by two earthquakes of magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 less than a minute apart last Wednesday, toppling buildings and trapping thousands of people beneath the rubble.
With chances of survival narrowing by the hour, Venezuela's legislature head Jorge Rodriguez said on Tuesdayonly one survivor -- a 3-year-old child -- had been rescued so far during the sixth day of rescue efforts. Those remain ongoing, however.
Donovan said U.S. Marines were the first U.S. personnel on the ground helping rescuers dig through rubble to find survivors. The U.S. military helped fly in civilians, including rescuers from Fairfax, Virginia who published video over the weekend of a rescue of a mother and her 9-month-old baby.
The broader operation is logistics-heavy, he said, focusing on helping ensure life saving international aid doesn't pile up at entry points.
"Because that's where these events can sometimes go sideways. You bring in too much material and you don't have the logistics behind it to then move (the aid) to the affected areas," Donovan said.
Venezuela's government has faced criticism for failing to move earlier to send in heavy equipment and search-and-rescue teams, leaving residents on their own, using their hands, shovels and ropes as they scrambled to find relatives in the crucial first days after the disaster.
By Saturday, state TV showed heavy construction equipment sorting through crushed brick and concrete in some places. Residents said foreign rescue teams had helped them pull out bodies.
Asked about frustrations inside Venezuela about the government's response, Donovan was cautious but acknowledged Caracas was grappling with previous decades of poor leadership that had "basically ruined the infrastructure of the nation."
Reported shortages of medicine and hospital staff can compound frustrations, he said.
Donovan declined to speculate how long the U.S. military's mission in Venezuela would last, deferring to the U.S. State Department, which is leading the broader U.S. relief mission. But he said the U.S. military wasn't preparing for any enduring mission on the ground with the troops sent in to aid relief efforts.
"There's no talk about staying," Donovan said. "This is what we do (in relief operations) ... We leave when we're done."
Still, Donovan voiced hope that U.S. efforts could build stronger U.S. military ties with Venezuela.
"If then this opens the door for a better mil-to-mil relationship, absolutely, we'll be ready to move forward," he said.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart; additional reporting by Vivian Sequera in Caracas, Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
