Akash Sama­roo

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter is call­ing on the Unit­ed States (US) to re­move its mil­i­tary pres­ence near Venezuela. Speak­ing dur­ing the morn­ing ses­sion of the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly to­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves told the As­sem­bly: “The re­cent ramp­ing up of ten­sions be­tween the USA and the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela is most un­help­ful to peace and sta­bil­i­ty in our Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca.

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines calls for the scal­ing back of ac­tions and rhetoric which are so in­im­i­cal to cor­dial neigh­bourly re­la­tions.” Gon­salves said his coun­try is deeply trou­bled by what he called the “for­eign mil­i­tari­sa­tion of the wa­ters.” “Re­peat­ed­ly, the coun­tries of the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca have unan­i­mous­ly de­clared our area a zone of peace. We urge our Amer­i­can friends to abide by this de­c­la­ra­tion,” he added.

He said while he agrees there must be a push­back against drug traf­fick­ing and transna­tion­al crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, “uni­lat­er­al mil­i­tari­sa­tion is de­cid­ed­ly not the way.” The St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter is urg­ing both the US and Venezuela to find a peace­ful so­lu­tion to their is­sues.

“Sit down ma­ture­ly and talk through these prob­lems so that we can have a res­o­lu­tion.” The US De­part­ment of Jus­tice has in­dict­ed Nicolás Maduro and oth­er top Venezue­lan of­fi­cials on drug-traf­fick­ing charges, al­leg­ing they lead a drug car­tel known as the Car­tel of the Suns. The US has al­so des­ig­nat­ed a Venezue­lan-ori­gin gang, Tren de Aragua, as a For­eign Ter­ror­ist Or­gan­i­sa­tion (FTO). The naval de­ploy­ment and sub­se­quent mil­i­tary strikes on al­leged smug­gling ves­sels are pre­sent­ed as a di­rect cam­paign against these “nar­co-ter­ror­ist” and transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions. How­ev­er, Venezuela be­lieves this is a ruse and the re­al pur­pose of the US in­ter­ven­tion is to put pres­sure on Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro to force his re­moval from of­fice.