Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she is “not con­cerned” about com­ments by Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, say­ing, “the US has nev­er re­quest­ed any ac­cess to our ter­ri­to­ry for any mil­i­tary ac­tion against Venezuela.”

She said Trinidad and To­ba­go has “al­ways had good re­la­tions with the Venezue­lan peo­ple and will con­tin­ue to do so.”

The Prime Min­is­ter was re­spond­ing via What­sApp to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro’s me­dia con­fer­ence, where he ques­tioned who was in­flu­enc­ing the Prime Min­is­ter to prac­ti­cal­ly de­clare war against Venezuela.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added that she sup­ports a re­spect­ful re­la­tion­ship with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, but the re­la­tion­ship will im­prove sig­nif­i­cant­ly when they be­gin to co­op­er­ate with T&T on repa­tri­a­tion mat­ters.

“That can start to­day with them ac­cept­ing the repa­tri­a­tion of some of their peo­ple. For over two months, they have stalled the repa­tri­a­tion of about 200 crim­i­nal mi­grants. I would al­so tell them to make an ef­fort to counter the drugs, arms and hu­man traf­fick­ing that is oc­cur­ring across the Gulf of Paria, which is fu­elling bloody gang vi­o­lence here. These are good items to start with to im­prove our re­la­tion­ship and main­tain long-term peace­ful ties,” she said.

In an in­ter­view with CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew last Wednes­day, Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador Ál­varo En­rique Sánchez Cordero said Venezuela was al­ways will­ing to repa­tri­ate its cit­i­zens, but US sanc­tions some­times made it more dif­fi­cult.

“There has al­ways been an is­sue be­cause, again, in an il­le­gal man­ner, the Unit­ed States prac­ti­cal­ly took all Venezue­lan air­planes, and those are the ones that we used to bring our com­pa­tri­ots back home. In the case of Trinidad, the Trinidad & To­ba­go gov­ern­ment does not al­low Venezue­lan air­craft to come un­der the pre­tense that they have been sanc­tioned by the Unit­ed States,” the Am­bas­sador said.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so re­spond­ed to this.

“Let him ac­count for his com­ments, but I am con­firm­ing that they are stalling the repa­tri­a­tion of Venezue­lan im­mi­grants who are de­tained in our jails and de­ten­tion cen­tres for crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty,” she replied. “We have every­thing in place on our side, and there is no cause for them not ac­cept­ing their cit­i­zens back to Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry.”

On re­ports of a sec­ond US Navy strike against a drug boat, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “The on­ly per­sons who are against this ac­tion are those who ben­e­fit di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly from the il­le­gal drug trade. Our cit­i­zens must take a close look at the in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions that are protest­ing against the drug in­ter­dic­tion ac­tiv­i­ties of the US Navy and ask why they are fight­ing so ve­he­ment­ly to pro­tect drug traf­fick­ers.”

She added that the coun­try’s econ­o­my has been “awash with drug mon­ey” and that op­po­si­tion to US counter-nar­cotics ac­tions is “fu­eled by the nar­co dol­lars of the big drug traf­fick­ers and their en­ablers in our coun­try.” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the US sup­port was nec­es­sary, not­ing, “There has been too much vi­o­lence and so­ci­etal de­struc­tion in the last 25 years. We need­ed help, and we are now get­ting that help from the US.”