JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she re­mains in sup­port of US strikes on al­leged Venezue­lan drug traf­fick­ers, even as she seeks to fos­ter a bet­ter re­la­tion­ship with that coun­try’s leader, Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro. On Tues­day, Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio as­sured the Prime Min­is­ter that the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion sup­ports Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Drag­on gas project. Af­ter bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions on en­er­gy and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, high on the agen­da in Wash­ing­ton, DC, Sec­re­tary Ru­bio ac­knowl­edged the sig­nif­i­cance of the Drag­on gas plan to T&T’s eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty and re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty.

He said the US sup­port in­clud­ed steps to safe­guard the project’s im­ple­men­ta­tion and en­sure that it all aligns with an Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cence, while lim­it­ing the ben­e­fits to the Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Maduro is deemed a nar­co traf­fick­er by the US, with the coun­try send­ing war­ships to the re­gion since Au­gust to stop what it claimed were traf­fick­ers reach­ing its main­land with il­le­gal drugs.

To date, there have been four air strikes on ves­sels, in­clud­ing one yes­ter­day that killed four peo­ple. In all, 21 peo­ple have been killed since the strikes be­gan on Sep­tem­ber 2.

US De­fence Sec­re­tary Pe­ter Hegseth yes­ter­day an­nounced that he or­dered an­oth­er strike on a small boat he ac­cused of car­ry­ing drugs in the wa­ters off Venezuela, ex­pand­ing what the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has de­clared is an “armed con­flict” with car­tels.

In a post on so­cial me­dia, Hegseth ex­plained the “ves­sel was traf­fick­ing nar­cotics” and those aboard were “nar­co-ter­ror­ists.” He said the strike killed four men but of­fered no fur­ther de­tails.

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said in his own so­cial me­dia post that the boat was “loaded with enough drugs to kill 25 TO 50 THOU­SAND PEO­PLE” and im­plied it was “en­ter­ing Amer­i­can ter­ri­to­ry” while off the coast of Venezuela.

Asked about yes­ter­day’s strike at a func­tion at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, the Prime Min­is­ter main­tained her sup­port for the US. She again de­nied that they were ex­tra-ju­di­cial.

“Crim­i­nals are crim­i­nals, and we have to wipe out crim­i­nals, as I said, vi­o­lent­ly. I said it. So, yes, we are in sup­port. Un­less I have ev­i­dence to the con­trary that some­thing is wrong, I have no such ev­i­dence. Peo­ple are say­ing no due process, no law, what­ev­er.”

She added, “The Unit­ed States is a sov­er­eign coun­try, and they are free to ex­er­cise their sov­er­eign­ty in mat­ters that they deem fit. I can­not in­ter­vene. I have no ev­i­dence. Oth­er­wise, I can on­ly go on the ba­sis of what has been shared, that we are all en­gaged in the bat­tle against the nar­co-traf­fick­ers, the hu­man traf­fick­ers, and the gun run­ners.”

Al­so com­ment­ing on the pres­ence of the US mil­i­tary was Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Michael Callan, who said the un­cer­tain­ty in the re­gion was con­cern­ing.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, he said: “In those shift­ing times that we’re in now, when there’s in­creas­ing un­cer­tain­ty and in­sta­bil­i­ty, it’s a re­minder that we need to rein­vest and re­dou­ble our ef­forts with our trust­ed friends and with our close part­ners and ce­ment those re­la­tion­ships that are dear to our hearts and dear to our na­tion­al in­ter­ests. So there’s no co­in­ci­dence that it’s hap­pen­ing this year. It’s a way to coun­ter­bal­ance the desta­bil­is­ing ef­fects of the geopol­i­tics at the mo­ment.”