VENEZUELAN President Nicolas Maduro accused the US diplomatic corps on Tuesday of fomenting foreign intervention against his country.

He called for a mass demonstration on Sunday in opposition to Washington-backed destabilisation.

Speaking at a televised cabinet meeting, Mr Maduro said the US State Department had instructed its embassies in the region and beyond to press governments to turn against Caracas.

“The State Department has activated all its embassies … all its ambassadors, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean,” he said.

Washington was “pressuring all the governments … to aid a global intervention against Venezuela.”

Last month, the US Treasury Department slapped sanctions on Venezuelan VicePresident Tareck El Aissami, claiming that he was involved in drug trafficking.

In January, outgoing president Barack Obama renewed his decree branding Venezuela a threat to US security for the second time.

During the cabinet meeting at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Mr Maduro said the US aim was to “convert our country into a species of neocolony … governed from abroad, governed by US magnates, Venezuelan magnates from Miami.”

He reiterated his United Socialist Party (PSUV) government’s commitment to prevent foreign powers from seizing Venezuela’s riches.

“We have confronted them and we are going to keep confronting them, with the law, with the constitution in our hand… with the truth, with reason, with morals,” Mr Maduro insisted.

And he laid into the rightwing Democratic Unity Roundtable (Mud) opposition, which has boycotted internationally mediated talks with the government since January after failing to force a presidential recall referendum.

“They are senseless. They are ones who sell out their country, who beg the North American empire and the right to come and intervene and govern Venezuela,” the president said.

Mr Maduro countered claims by the US and Luis Almagro, secretary-general of the Washington-based Organisation of American States (OAS), that his government was frustrating the democratic will of his people by refusing to call an early presidential election.

On Monday, PSUV ally the Communist Party of Venezuela urged the government to reconsider its membership of the OAS and to hold talks on uniting the country’s antiimperialist forces.

Politburo member Carlos Aquino said Mr Almagro was solely dedicated to attacking Caracas, while ignoring far worse problems across the region.