Sto­ries by Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs min­is­ter Amery Browne has reached out to the min­istry to of­fer his help in set­tling the cur­rent diplo­mat­ic is­sue with Venezuela—but cur­rent For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers says it is not Browne’s place.

Sobers re­spond­ed af­ter Browne and Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les spoke about the is­sue at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader in Port-of-Spain.

Their state­ments con­cerned Venezuela’s claims of a T&T na­tion­al be­ing among mer­ce­nar­ies caught en­ter­ing that coun­try from T&T and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s sub­se­quent warn­ing to Venezuela that T&T is “off-lim­its” and that dead­ly force would be em­ployed on uniden­ti­fied ves­sels try­ing to en­ter our wa­ters il­le­gal­ly.

Browne had said the mat­ter was a test of lead­er­ship and there was a need for pru­dence on the first take and fol­low-up re­ac­tion on mat­ters that can have grave im­pli­ca­tions and leave scars on neigh­bour­ing coun­tries’ re­la­tion­ships.

Speak­ing dur­ing the me­dia con­fer­ence, Beck­les said, “One week has passed and we haven’t heard any­thing from the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs and why has over one week passed with­out the Am­bas­sador of Venezuela be­ing brought in for di­rect ex­changes of in­for­ma­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion to un­der­stand what ex­act­ly has tran­spired?

“It is not all that dif­fi­cult in a diplo­mat­ic sense to sim­ply ask for clar­i­fi­ca­tion and par­tic­u­lars. We have an em­bassy in Venezuela and there’s a Venezue­lan am­bas­sador in T&T, so the ques­tion aris­es whether we’ve dis­patched any diplo­mat­ic notes, why have we not briefed Cari­com, ex­plained our po­si­tion and so­licit­ed sup­port if re­quired by our Cari­com col­leagues.”

Beck­les added, “I hope the Gov­ern­ment will use this week to do far bet­ter in this mat­ter than they’ve done for the last week. It is in our eco­nom­ic and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­ests that ten­sions be re­duced and this sit­u­a­tion must be prop­er­ly han­dled.”

She not­ed that St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Ralph Gon­salves had ad­vised Gov­ern­ment to “tone down.” She said Gon­salves was in­volved for decades in Cari­com, and Cari­com had played a crit­i­cal role in the Guyana/Venezuela bor­der is­sue.

Browne al­so not­ed the min­istry’s lead­er­ship and Min­is­ter Sobers’ si­lence. He said the new For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter is very young.

Browne said, “I have reached out via se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cials/pub­lic ser­vants in the min­istry and via oth­er chan­nels, con­tacts I’ve had with­in the UNC, to in­di­cate that my­self and maybe oth­ers would be will­ing if there’s a word to help set­tle, et cetera, in the first stages.

“We all were new min­is­ters at one point. But that may not fit in­to the usu­al rhythm of the pol­i­tics of T&T and that’s why the fact that oth­er voic­es have been mo­bilised, oth­er words of ad­vice may be from quar­ters from which it may be more eas­i­ly re­ceived, have al­so en­tered the space and pro­vid­ed a con­sis­tent mes­sage to the Gov­ern­ment. I hope the new min­is­ter will do well and rise to the oc­ca­sion, that will al­ways arise.”

Browne, among his state­ments, had al­so point­ed out that the For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry’s per­ma­nent sec­re­tary—a vet­er­an for­eign ser­vice of­fi­cer—was re­cent­ly trans­ferred from that min­istry, as was the deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary.

“So, the min­istry not on­ly has a new min­is­ter, but al­so new par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary and brand new PS ... So the lead­er­ship of the min­istry from the for­eign ser­vice per­spec­tive has been al­tered sig­nif­i­cant­ly,” Browne added.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, how­ev­er, Min­is­ter Sobers said, “Num­ber one, we did not re­ceive any doc­u­ment from for­mer Min­is­ter Browne on the mat­ter, and num­ber two, to be fair, Dr Browne is a cit­i­zen of this coun­try and while his act may be well-in­ten­tioned, re­spect­ful­ly, it is not his place.

“I am the sub­stan­tive Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs and it is with­in the pow­ers of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to treat with those is­sues as it re­lates to Venezuela and any oth­er for­eign coun­try that we may en­gage with. There must be no mis­con­cep­tion and con­fu­sion as it re­lates to whom for­eign en­ti­ties should be speak­ing with, and I think on April 28, the pub­lic spoke in one re­sound­ing tone on who the gov­ern­ment of T&T should be.”