Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says face-to-face talks are ex­pect­ed to take place with the Unit­ed States lat­er this month, af­ter the US ac­knowl­edged her “pub­lic sup­port” of its mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions.

Yes­ter­day, the US State De­part­ment re­leased de­tails of a call be­tween Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, Lan­dau reaf­firmed the strength of the US–Trinidad and To­ba­go part­ner­ship, de­scrib­ing the coun­try as a “strong US part­ner in the Caribbean.”

He ac­knowl­edged the Prime Min­is­ter’s pub­lic sup­port of US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the South Caribbean Sea and em­pha­sised both gov­ern­ments’ com­mit­ment to com­bat­ing il­le­gal nar­cotics and firearms traf­fick­ing. The Deputy Sec­re­tary al­so high­light­ed the im­por­tance of es­tab­lish­ing a UN Sup­port Of­fice for Haiti, with both lead­ers stress­ing the need for in­ter­na­tion­al as­sis­tance to ad­dress in­se­cu­ri­ty and vi­o­lence there.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, when con­tact­ed, re­vealed the call was re­quest­ed by Deputy Sec­re­tary Lan­dau and de­scribed it as pro­duc­tive.

“It was a very cor­dial and pro­duc­tive call. We dis­cussed a num­ber of is­sues, which are mu­tu­al­ly im­por­tant and ben­e­fi­cial to both coun­tries.”

The Prime Min­is­ter added that there are plans to ad­vance the dis­cus­sions. “A face-to-face meet­ing was pro­posed by Mr Lan­dau to be held lat­er this month on the mar­gins of the UN­GA (Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly).”

How­ev­er, on the top­ic of es­tab­lish­ing a sup­port of­fice for Haiti, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said this coun­try will not be send­ing troops there. “No, we will not be send­ing troops to Haiti; dis­cus­sions on Haiti were based on for­eign pol­i­cy items.”

Mean­while, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge con­firmed that T&T con­tin­ues to share in­tel­li­gence with the US on nar­co and firearms traf­fick­ing. But he stressed that Gov­ern­ment has not grant­ed Wash­ing­ton ac­cess to its ports, air­space, or ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters for re­gion­al op­er­a­tions “at this time.”

His com­ments fol­low re­marks by US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, who said in Ecuador on Thurs­day that Wash­ing­ton’s al­lies would help “find these peo­ple (nar­co-traf­fick­ers) and blow them up.”

When asked di­rect­ly whether Gov­ern­ment was aware of that spe­cif­ic pledge, Sturge did not re­spond. Nor did he say what will hap­pen to the two bod­ies that washed ashore over the week­end, which po­lice sus­pect may have come from a ves­sel de­stroyed by the US last Tues­day while al­leged­ly car­ry­ing 11 Venezue­lans, drugs, and weapons.

In a What­sApp ex­change about the dis­cov­er­ies at Cumana and Ba­lan­dra beach­es, Sturge said: “The Gov­ern­ment’s im­me­di­ate con­cern is the safe­ty of our coun­try and to car­ry out our man­date of en­sur­ing that the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens en­joy their con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly guar­an­teed right to life and se­cu­ri­ty.”

The min­is­ter was al­so pressed on whether this coun­try’s co­op­er­a­tion with Wash­ing­ton could strain ties with Venezuela, af­ter In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo re­cent­ly re­ferred to the Prime Min­is­ter as a “drunk woman gov­ern­ing Trinidad.” Sturge said: “I do not be­lieve that our good re­la­tions will be dam­aged with any coun­try who shares our val­ues and strate­gic ob­jec­tives as it re­lates to con­fronting the car­tels whose trade brings no end of may­hem to those di­rect­ly af­fect­ed.”

How­ev­er, Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, for­mer head of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at UWI St Au­gus­tine, said Gov­ern­ment needs to pro­vide greater trans­paren­cy on its co­op­er­a­tion with Wash­ing­ton. He not­ed that while the US has ref­er­enced “agree­ments” with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion, no de­tails have been dis­closed by Gov­ern­ment.

Gon­za­les warned that the fall­out is al­ready vis­i­ble, with bod­ies wash­ing up on lo­cal beach­es—an im­age at odds with T&T’s rep­u­ta­tion as a tourist des­ti­na­tion and “zone of peace.” He al­so point­ed to grow­ing con­tra­dic­tions be­tween Gov­ern­ment’s in­sis­tence that re­la­tions with Cara­cas re­main strong and in­creas­ing­ly hos­tile rhetoric from Venezue­lan of­fi­cials.

“I be­lieve to some ex­tent they (Gov­ern­ment) may be un­der­es­ti­mat­ing what the Venezue­lans may be think­ing about this,” Gon­za­les said. “But my sus­pi­cion is that the Venezue­lans are not hap­py with the po­si­tion that we are tak­ing. I think they prob­a­bly would pre­fer to stay like the rest of the re­gion, with the ex­cep­tion, of course, of Guyana. They’re still lis­ten­ing to hear where we’re go­ing with this, and they will prob­a­bly de­cide down the road ex­act­ly how they’re go­ing to re­act.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, the Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador to T&T, Ál­varo Sánchez Cordero, re­it­er­at­ed his gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion. “The po­si­tion of the Venezue­lan Gov’t hasn’t changed. We still be­lieve that it was high­ly pos­si­ble that the blow­ing of a pirogue was cre­at­ed by AI.”

How­ev­er, he said, if it were re­al, sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al and US laws were vi­o­lat­ed. He cit­ed the 1982 UN Con­ven­tion on the Law of the Sea, the 1988 Vi­en­na Con­ven­tion Against the Il­lic­it Traf­fic of Drugs, Ar­ti­cle 51 of the UN Char­ter, the In­ter­na­tion­al Pact on Civ­il and Po­lit­i­cal Rights, the US Drug Con­trol of Mar­itime Traf­fick Act, the 5th Amend­ment of the US Con­sti­tu­tion, and the War Pow­ers Res­o­lu­tion.

When asked if his em­bassy would seek of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion of the men’s iden­ti­ties who washed ashore in T&T, or take fur­ther mea­sures if they are con­firmed to be Venezue­lan na­tion­als, the Am­bas­sador de­clined to com­ment.