Former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe is recorded telling US business leaders that Venezuela's military should 'remove' Maduro; Uribe later tweets the same message.

A video was revealed on Sunday showing former Colombian president,Alvaro Uribe, telling a group of listeners that Venezuelan soldiers need to “remove” President Nicolas Maduro from office.

The recording was released just 24 hours after two air drones carrying explosives were detonated above President Maduro and several members of his administration on Saturday as the head of state addressed a large crowd at the 81st anniversary of the Bolivarian National Guard in Caracas. Maduro and other Venezuelan officials are saying that right-wing factions in the United States, Venezuelan and Colombia are behind the drone bombs.

In the video the former president and current Congress member says in English:

“I have said this in public, I have said that the Venezuelan soldiers need to remove that government (of Nicolas Maduro), not to establish a military government, but to call for a rapid transition, with democratic and transparent elections.

“When I say that the United States should help promote that decision, it is in private, for us,” Uribe tells the small group of U.S. business leaders at his home in the Rio Negro, Antioquia on Saturday, hours before the failed attack on Venezuela’s head of state.

Uribe is himself under investigation by Colombia’s Supreme Court for bribery and witness tampering in a case against him for allegedly masterminding a violent paramilitary group in his home department of Antioquia while he served there a governor between 1995 and 1997

The former president has politically groomed incoming president, Ivan Duque, also of the Democratic Center party. The two have long been opposed to the 2016 peace accords reached by FARC and outgoing president Manuel Santos. Duque will be sworn in on Tuesday, August 7.