Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­missed Venezuela’s move to de­clare her per­sona non gra­ta, call­ing it “a use­less de­c­la­ra­tion” and in­sist­ing, “it has no ef­fect on my life.”

She ques­tioned why Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties are tar­get­ing her per­son­al­ly rather than US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, point­ing out that the war­ships in­volved in re­cent drug in­ter­dic­tion ex­er­cis­es are Amer­i­can prop­er­ty. “They should call Pres­i­dent Trump’s name. He is the com­man­der of those war­ships,” she said. The Prime Min­is­ter said  Trinidad and To­ba­go will con­tin­ue “sup­port­ing drug in­ter­dic­tion ex­er­cis­es against nar­co traf­fick­ers in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters.”

The Na­tion­al As­sem­bly of the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela is to­day de­bat­ing a mo­tion to de­clare Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar per­sona non gra­ta, in ac­cor­dance with Ar­ti­cle 111 of its in­ter­nal reg­u­la­tions.

Re­la­tions have fur­ther strained fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro’s an­nounce­ment that Venezuela will sus­pend all en­er­gy ne­go­ti­a­tions with Port of Spain. The move fol­lows the dock­ing of a US naval ves­sel on Sun­day and claims from Cara­cas that the US, with Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sup­port, is al­leged­ly plot­ting to pro­voke an at­tack on Venezuela—al­le­ga­tions that the T&T gov­ern­ment has firm­ly de­nied.