Wife of Venezuela's Guaido says army is key to political change

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - The Venezuelan opposition led by self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido just needs the country's military to back him in order to bring down the government, Guaido's wife Fabiana Rosales said in an interview published in an Argentine newspaper on Tuesday.

The United States and several other countries around the world, including Argentina, have recognised Guaido as Venezuela's legitimate head of state and denounced leftist President Nicolas Maduro as a usurper. Maduro, sworn in earlier this month for a second term after disputed elections last year, accuses Guaido of staging a U.S.-directed coup against him.

Rosales told La Nacion that "very little" was missing to bring down Maduro, who succeeded Hugo Chavez as Venezuela's president in 2013.

"What's missing here is what we've said every day: the military. We have everything else: the international community, the people on the streets and the resources that will be repatriated," Rosales, a 26-year-old journalist, told La Nacion.

Rosales, who told the newspaper she considers herself neither left-wing nor right-wing, said she met Guaido almost seven years ago, when both were activists in the opposition organisation Popular Will.

"This regime has spent 20 years destroying young people and the future," she told La Nacion. "All the leaders of the opposition share the same goal. To free Venezuela."

(Reporting by Nicolas Misculin, writing by Hugh Bronstein, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)