Amid fears of es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions in the re­gion and the ar­rival of a US Navy ves­sel in Port of Spain, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment has sought to down­play con­cerns about the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary pres­ence in the coun­try.

In a Face­book post shared this morn­ing, the Reg­i­ment said the on­go­ing joint train­ing be­tween the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment and the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary forms part of “long­stand­ing, pre-planned mil­i­tary co­op­er­a­tion ini­tia­tives,” sim­i­lar to Ex­er­cise Tradewinds held ear­li­er this year. The post in­clud­ed pho­tos from a May Face­book post where both sides took part in train­ing ex­er­cis­es.

The re­as­sur­ance fol­lows re­ports from Al Jazeera and Reuters of height­ened ten­sions af­ter the ar­rival of the USS Grave­ly at the Port of Port of Spain. The ves­sel, car­ry­ing mem­bers of the 22nd US Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit, is ex­pect­ed to re­main docked un­til Thurs­day.

Reuters re­port­ed that Venezuela con­demned what it de­scribed as “a mil­i­tary provo­ca­tion” by Trinidad and To­ba­go, al­leged­ly co­or­di­nat­ed with the US Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Agency, and ac­cused both coun­tries of at­tempt­ing to spark a full-scale mil­i­tary con­fronta­tion with the Latin Amer­i­can na­tion. Cara­cas said the joint mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es be­tween the US and Trinidad and To­ba­go were ev­i­dence of that ef­fort.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­fend­ed the col­lab­o­ra­tion, say­ing her gov­ern­ment’s pri­or­i­ty is na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. She ar­gued that Trinidad and To­ba­go faces lev­els of crime, drug traf­fick­ing, and gang vi­o­lence that dif­fer from oth­er Caribbean states, which re­cent­ly signed a “Zone of Peace” de­c­la­ra­tion call­ing for neu­tral­i­ty.

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge told Al Jazeera the ex­er­cis­es form part of on­go­ing se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion tar­get­ing nar­co-traf­fick­ing net­works and stressed that no hos­tile op­er­a­tions had tak­en place in lo­cal wa­ters.

The vis­it and joint train­ing come as the Gov­ern­ment re­views the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency, which ex­pires next week, amid con­tin­ued se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns and re­ports of for­eign and do­mes­tic crim­i­nal net­works op­er­at­ing in the re­gion.