DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers is as­sur­ing cit­i­zens that there was “noth­ing to fear” from the re­cent vis­it of the Unit­ed States Navy de­stroy­er USS Grave­ly to T&T.

Speak­ing dur­ing a tele­phone call fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Sobers dis­missed on­go­ing spec­u­la­tion that the ves­sel’s pres­ence sig­nalled any form of mil­i­tary in­volve­ment or se­cret agree­ment with the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“There was noth­ing for the cit­i­zens to fear about the Grave­ly be­ing here. As a mat­ter of fact, it was on­ly ben­e­fi­cial to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Sobers said.

Asked whether any US forces, com­bat gear, or equip­ment were left be­hind, Sobers replied, “No, I am not aware that any­body has re­mained in Trinidad and To­ba­go. And two, co­op­er­a­tion with our De­fence Force and theirs is some­thing that pre-ex­ist­ed this ad­min­is­tra­tion, and the ad­min­is­tra­tion be­fore, and the ad­min­is­tra­tion be­fore that. We have long diplo­mat­ic ties with the US—they are our largest train­ing part­ner. We do many, many, many ex­er­cis­es with them—not on­ly with the mil­i­tary but with oth­er arms of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices such as the TTPS and the Trinidad and To­ba­go naval units as well.”

He added, “Noth­ing was left be­hind oth­er than good­will, peace, har­mo­ny, and love.”

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the fear the ship’s pres­ence in T&T had caused amongst the pub­lic at the post-Cab­i­net brief­ing ear­li­er, Sobers said, “I wish I could have been like my Prime Min­is­ter to in­di­cate that my name is Kam­la and they should be calm. But I would say that they should al­ways be calm. There is noth­ing to wor­ry about and I don’t know what would have caused all this pan­ic amongst the cit­i­zen­ry. All is well in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Ac­cord­ing to Sobers, the war­ship’s stop in Port-of-Spain fol­lowed its par­tic­i­pa­tion in re­gion­al mil­i­tary train­ing ex­er­cis­es and a hu­man­i­tar­i­an out­reach project at the Lochmaben Ro­man Catholic School in Ce­dros last Au­gust, where US Marines helped re­pair the school. Stu­dents from the school were in­vit­ed to tour the ves­sel this time around and did so on Tues­day, an ex­pe­ri­ence he de­scribed as “an op­por­tu­ni­ty of a life­time” for them.

“It was re­al­ly about train­ing,” he ex­plained.

“Com­ing out of Ex­er­cise Tradewinds, there were cer­tain de­fi­cien­cies iden­ti­fied. The mil­i­tary asked for tech­ni­cal peo­ple-to-peo­ple as­sis­tance, and US South­com agreed to pro­vide that sup­port.”

Sobers said the ship’s crew al­so vis­it­ed naval fa­cil­i­ties that the Gov­ern­ment hopes to re­store to full op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty with US tech­ni­cal help.

“We’ve asked the US to as­sist us, whether through tech­ni­cal or fi­nan­cial sup­port. It’s still to be worked out, but that was the na­ture of the en­gage­ment,” he added.

The min­is­ter ex­plained that lo­gis­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tions—not pol­i­tics—dic­tat­ed the de­ci­sion to dock the ves­sel in Port-of-Spain rather than at Teteron Bar­racks in Ch­aguara­mas.

“It (Port-of-Spain Har­bour) was the most strate­gic place for the ves­sel to dock be­cause of its size,” he said, not­ing that car­go op­er­a­tions were tem­porar­i­ly rerout­ed to Point Lisas to avoid dis­rup­tion.

“It’s not the first time. When the USNS Com­fort docked, it was at the same lo­ca­tion.”

Ad­dress­ing ques­tions about the tim­ing of the vis­it, which co­in­cid­ed with in­creased US mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty against nar­co traf­fick­ers in the re­gion, Sobers said T&T had no con­trol over when the ves­sel ar­rived.

“The pub­lic al­so has to ap­pre­ci­ate that when we make re­quests of the US—or any oth­er coun­try—you op­er­ate on their sched­ule. It’s not when you want them to come,” he said.

While de­clin­ing to dis­close spe­cif­ic op­er­a­tional de­tails for se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons, Sobers con­firmed that the T&T De­fence Force ben­e­fit­ed from the vis­it through prac­ti­cal train­ing and oth­er ex­changes.

He added that while the Grave­ly may not re­turn, fu­ture col­lab­o­ra­tions with US forces—par­tic­u­lar­ly in ed­u­ca­tion and hu­man­i­tar­i­an ar­eas—will con­tin­ue.

“It’s on­go­ing, con­tin­u­ing sup­port,” he said.

Sobers al­so clar­i­fied that the Sta­tus of Forces Agree­ment (SO­FA) be­tween T&T and the Unit­ed States re­mains un­changed, not­ing that the frame­work pre­dates the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion. The agree­ment fa­cil­i­tates in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty be­tween T&T and US armed forces.

Ac­cord­ing to the US Em­bassy, the two coun­tries have main­tained a SO­FA since 2007. The agree­ment was first en­tered in­to un­der the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment in 2013, ex­tend­ed by diplo­mat­ic note on De­cem­ber 19, 2022, and lat­er amend­ed by then Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds in 2023.