Suzanne Shep­pard

Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Den­nis Moses says Trinidad and To­ba­go is not bound by re­cent de­ci­sions made in re­la­tion to the Rio Treaty, in­clud­ing the trav­el re­stric­tions im­posed on Venezuela Vice-Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez.

Speak­ing on the ad­journ­ment of the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Moses said T&T had been con­sis­tent in that po­si­tion at the OAS Gen­er­al As­sem­bly last June and at a Sep­tem­ber 2019 meet­ing of the Rio Treaty mem­ber coun­tries.

Moses said the hemi­spher­ic pact had been dis­tort­ed by re­cent ef­forts to im­pose sanc­tions on Venezuela.

Break­ing his si­lence on the con­tro­ver­sial March vis­it to T&T by Ro­driguez and claims that this coun­ty had vi­o­lat­ed the Rio Treaty, Moses said: “Notwith­stand­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties with­in Venezuela, Trinidad and To­ba­go stands on sol­id ground in be­ing in har­mo­ny with the po­si­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions and the stat­ed po­si­tion of Cari­com in recog­nis­ing the gov­ern­ment led by Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro as the le­git­i­mate gov­ern­ment of Venezuela.

“Giv­en our un­der­stand­ing of the Char­ter of the Unit­ed Na­tions, Trinidad and To­ba­go does not recog­nise Mr Juan Guai­do as the pres­i­dent of Venezuela. To do oth­er­wise would run counter to the stat­ed po­si­tions of Cari­com and the Unit­ed Na­tions.”

He added: “The dis­tor­tion of the Rio Treaty, a col­lec­tive self-de­fence pact, to treat with mat­ters in­ter­nal to Venezuela with­out the re­quest or con­sent of that coun­try is ques­tion­able and does not sit well with the in­tend­ed pur­pos­es of the Treaty.

“In­deed, as the Rio Treaty ex­plic­it­ly in­forms, none of the pro­vi­sions of the Treaty shall be con­strued as im­pair­ing the right and oblig­a­tions of the high con­tract­ing par­ties un­der the Char­ter of the Unit­ed Na­tions.”

Short­ly af­ter a del­e­ga­tion led by the Venezue­lan Vice-Pres­i­dent was grant­ed an ex­emp­tion to en­ter T&T for a meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in late March, of­fi­cials of the Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain warned that Ro­driguez was sub­ject to trav­el sanc­tions that are bind­ing on all Rio Treaty par­ties, in­clud­ing T&T.

Last week, US Am­bas­sador Joseph Mon­del­lo al­so is­sued a pub­lic state­ment con­firm­ing that he had a con­ver­sa­tion with Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to ad­dress the T&T’s oblig­a­tion to the treaty.

Mon­del­lo said, “I wish to af­firm that I ex­pressed con­cern to the Min­is­ter in that con­ver­sa­tion about the con­sis­ten­cy of Del­cy Ro­driguez’s vis­it to Port-of-Spain with T&T’s oblig­a­tions as a par­ty to the Rio Treaty. Ar­ti­cle 20 of the Rio Treaty makes it un­am­bigu­ous­ly clear that all mea­sures im­posed by the Or­gan of Con­sul­ta­tion—like the trav­el re­stric­tions on Ms Ro­driguez—are bind­ing on all treaty par­ties, whether or not they vot­ed in favour of such mea­sures.”

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley sub­se­quent­ly ini­ti­at­ed a dis­cus­sion with the Mon­del­lo, along with Young and Moses on the is­sue the next day (May 20).

Brief de­tails of those dis­cus­sions were giv­en in a press re­lease from the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs, in­di­cat­ing that the meet­ing was in fur­ther­ance of “our mu­tu­al in­ter­ests, but­tressed by re­spect for each oth­er’s sov­er­eign­ty and a clear un­der­stand­ing of each oth­er’s for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tions.”

At a meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 23, 2019, in New York, Rio Treaty mem­ber coun­tries agreed to im­pose sanc­tions against the Maduro regime.

The res­o­lu­tion stat­ed that mem­ber coun­tries may sanc­tion and ex­tra­dite mem­bers of the Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion who par­tic­i­pate in drug traf­fick­ing, ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ties, or­gan­ised crime and hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions, as well as freeze their as­sets.

It was ap­proved by 16 coun­tries but T&T ab­stained from the vote and Uruguay vot­ed against it.