Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is stress­ing that her Gov­ern­ment has no ev­i­dence to sug­gest that the Unit­ed States de­clared clam­p­down on nar­co-ter­ror­ists in the re­gion is a façade to de­pose Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro.

The claim has been prof­fered by both Venezuela and Cu­ba in re­cent days as US war­ships con­tin­ue their jour­ney to the Caribbean to wage a “war on drugs.” The two coun­tries claimed that the US has a his­to­ry of cre­at­ing false nar­ra­tives to in­ter­fere in the af­fairs of sov­er­eign states.

Speak­ing with re­porters af­ter a brief bi­lat­er­al meet­ing with Grena­da’s Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “I don’t agree with them. I do not agree with that. Again, there are those who are for and those who are against. There will al­ways be those who will say yes and no. There’s one nar­ra­tive com­ing from one side, the oth­er nar­ra­tive is com­ing. I have no ev­i­dence, again I say, that the things that they’re al­leg­ing, that is in fact hap­pen­ing. I have no such ev­i­dence,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She added, “What Cu­ba is say­ing, what Venezuela is say­ing, give us ev­i­dence. We will con­sid­er.”

Al­so asked if this T&T had en­tered in­to any for­mal al­liance with the US and oth­er coun­tries, af­ter US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio on Tues­day said the US is build­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al coali­tion against drugs, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­spond­ed, “We are in al­liance with any­one, any­where who will help us fight drugs, crime, guns, crim­i­nals. We are in al­liance with any such coun­tries and per­sons any­where in the world.”

Guardian Me­dia asked if any agree­ment was for­malised with the US. But Per­sad-Bisses­sar said while T&T stands ready to as­sist in the war against drugs and guns, there is no rat­i­fied al­liance.

“We have giv­en sup­port for the in­ter­ven­tion, as far as we are aware, for these ships and mil­i­tary and who­ev­er to be here. But there’s no al­liance say­ing that I’m go­ing to give Teteron Bar­racks, I’m go­ing to give Staubles Bay. No fa­cil­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go have been pledged to any­one else,” she clar­i­fied.

Asked if she thought a nu­clear sub­ma­rine may be overkill to fight a drug car­tel, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “That is not for me to de­ter­mine. This is a sov­er­eign na­tion. They’re go­ing in­to in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters as far as our knowl­edge is and, there­fore, it is not for me to judge what is good or not bad. Trinidad and To­ba­go, apart from World War II, we have nev­er been en­gaged in any war. So I can­not as­sess what they want to do or not do.”

The PM added, “They will not be on our soil, they will be in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters. I want to make that very clear there.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was al­so asked to re­spond to Venezuela’s rul­ing par­ty, the Unit­ed So­cial­ist Par­ty of Venezuela (PSUV), which said her sup­port for the US naval pres­ence and of­fer of T&T as a base to the US, if Venezuela moves on Guyana’s Es­se­qui­bo re­gion, was “shame­ful”. The PSUV al­so added that it is sure the peo­ple of T&T do not stand by her.

In re­sponse the PM said, “I stand by what I’ve said be­fore. Hav­ing the US in­ter­ven­tion in the Caribbean wa­ters is ben­e­fi­cial to Trinidad and To­ba­go. I have no quar­rel with Venezuela. We main­tain good re­la­tion­ships. If the min­is­ter has said those things, I’m not pro­voked, I’m not wor­ried.”

Stand­ing next to her, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers al­so said this coun­try con­tin­ues to have a good re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela.

Sobers said, “I’ve con­tin­ued to have dis­cus­sions with the Venezue­lan am­bas­sador in Trinidad and To­ba­go and as the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter has in­di­cat­ed, our re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela re­mains in­tact and that is the po­si­tion.”

The PM stressed that T&T must main­tain a bal­anc­ing act.

“We have not had any war zones with Venezuela, but it’s not just for a coun­try like us. It’s all over the world with the new geopo­lit­i­cal ar­chi­tec­ture that is form­ing. We all have to bal­ance and we all have to re­think things that might have hap­pened in the past,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Cari­com’s con­tin­ued si­lence on the mat­ter may be be­cause its chair, Ja­maica PM An­drew Hol­ness, and Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali, are busy with their re­spec­tive elec­tion cam­paigns. Guyana’s elec­tion is on Sep­tem­ber 1 and Ja­maica’s will be held on Sep­tem­ber 3.

Guardian Me­dia sought to get a com­ment from Grena­da PM Dick­on Mitchell on the US mil­i­tary pres­ence as he left the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre but he de­clined to an­swer.

“Catch­ing a flight, no com­ment,” he said.

The US is in­creas­ing its mil­i­tary pres­ence in the south­ern Caribbean. The US first de­ployed three naval ves­sels—the USS San An­to­nio, USS Iwo Ji­ma, and USS Fort Laud­erdale—to the Caribbean, fol­lowed by re­ports that two more, the USS Lake Erie and USS New­port News, would ar­rive in the re­gion by ear­ly next week.

Venezuela’s UN mis­sion is ac­cus­ing the US of “nu­clear in­tim­i­da­tion” in the Caribbean and is de­mand­ing an end to the US mil­i­tary de­ploy­ments. It wants Wash­ing­ton to pro­vide guar­an­tees against de­ploy­ing or threat­en­ing nu­clear weapons in the re­gion, and is urg­ing UN mem­ber states to up­hold Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean’s sta­tus as a de­nu­clearised “Zone of Peace.”