Guyana’s Pres­i­dent, Dr Ir­faan Ali urged Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) lead­ers on Tues­day to ap­proach the grow­ing pres­ence of Unit­ed States naval as­sets in the Caribbean with “eyes wide open”, em­pha­sis­ing the need for ma­ture and open dis­cus­sions on se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters af­fect­ing the re­gion.

The state-owned De­part­ment of Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion (DPI) quot­ed Dr Ali as say­ing that while some Caribbean lead­ers may view the U.S. mil­i­tary buildup pos­i­tive­ly, Guyana recog­nis­es that the sit­u­a­tion re­quires care­ful ex­am­i­na­tion.

“The zone of peace is not on­ly about threats to bor­ders. It’s al­so about threats that we are now see­ing,” he said, not­ing con­cerns such as drug traf­fick­ing, il­le­gal mi­gra­tion, and the use of in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ter­ways for tran­ship­ment.

The Unit­ed States has or­dered an am­phibi­ous squadron to the south­ern Caribbean as part of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ef­fort to ad­dress threats from Latin Amer­i­can drug car­tels. A nu­clear-pow­ered at­tack sub­ma­rine, ad­di­tion­al P8 Po­sei­don re­con­nais­sance air­craft, sev­er­al de­stroy­ers and a guid­ed-mis­sile cruis­er al­so have been al­lo­cat­ed to U.S. South­ern Com­mand as part of the mis­sion.

Venezuela has since re­spond­ed to what it termed “the threat posed by the Unit­ed States” and has it­self mar­shalled its troops along its bor­ders.

Late last month, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump or­dered the U.S. mil­i­tary to strike a boat al­leged­ly car­ry­ing drugs in the Caribbean Sea off Venezuela, killing 11. Ear­li­er this month, he told re­porters from the Oval Of­fice that he had strong ev­i­dence that the lat­est boat in which three peo­ple were killed, al­so was car­ry­ing drugs.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment has come out pub­licly in sup­port of the Unit­ed States send­ing naval and mil­i­tary troops to wa­ters near Venezuela as part of Wash­ing­ton’s crack­down on nacro-traf­fick­ing.

In her ad­dress to the UN­GA last week­end, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar said while there have been ob­jec­tions to the U.S. mil­i­tary ac­tion against drug car­tels from some coun­tries, Port of Spain want­ed to re­mind the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that:

“…un­less force­ful and ag­gres­sive ac­tions are tak­en, these evil drug car­tels will con­tin­ue their so­ci­etal de­struc­tion be­cause they be­lieve af­fect­ed na­tions will al­ways un­re­served­ly sub­scribe to morals and ethics which they them­selves bla­tant­ly flout.”

“That is why we will­ing­ly sup­port­ed the in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty al­liance an­nounced by U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, in­volv­ing the U.S. and sev­er­al coun­tries in South Amer­i­ca to com­bat drug-traf­fick­ing in the hemi­sphere,” she told the UN­GA, adding that the no­tion that the Caribbean is a zone of peace has be­come a false ide­al.

“The re­al­i­ty is stark—no such peace ex­ists to­day,” she ar­gued.

Pres­i­dent Ali said that Guyana has con­sis­tent­ly pro­mot­ed the re­gion as a zone of peace and has re­spond­ed to threats with diplo­ma­cy and truth rather than hos­til­i­ty.

“Every sin­gle day, the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment at­tacks me per­son­al­ly; at­tacks this coun­try. They say the worst things about us. But we have nev­er re­spond­ed in a hos­tile way. We re­spond­ed with facts and truth,” he said, un­der­scor­ing his coun­try’s com­mit­ment to mea­sured and prin­ci­pled diplo­ma­cy.

The Guyana Pres­i­dent em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of in­tel­li­gence shar­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tive dis­cus­sions among re­gion­al part­ners to un­der­stand ful­ly the im­pli­ca­tions of mil­i­tary move­ments.

“What is need­ed is a meet­ing of minds. A meet­ing to share in­tel­li­gence and to share in­for­ma­tion,” he said, “so a fuller un­der­stand­ing of what is at stake here for all of us.”

Pres­i­dent Ali main­tained that through open di­a­logue, trans­paren­cy, and re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion, Caribbean coun­tries can col­lec­tive­ly safe­guard peace and sta­bil­i­ty while ad­dress­ing emerg­ing se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)