Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

De­spite signs of new ten­sion from Venezuela yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said T&T’s re­la­tion­ship with our neigh­bour was “peace­ful.”

The Prime Min­is­ter made the brief re­mark when asked to clar­i­fy the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion amid es­ca­lat­ing rhetoric in a diplo­mat­ic row sparked by Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro’s claim last week that Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties had in­ter­cept­ed a para­mil­i­tary group at­tempt­ing to en­ter their coun­try via T&T, al­leged­ly with the aim of desta­bil­is­ing his regime.

Among the group, Maduro’s ad­min­is­tra­tion al­leged, was a man iden­ti­fied as Guis Kendell Jerome, who Venezue­lan Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo iden­ti­fied as a Trinida­di­an na­tion­al.

In re­sponse to the al­le­ga­tions, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had pre­vi­ous­ly is­sued a strong­ly word­ed warn­ing to the Maduro regime, stat­ing that T&T’s ter­ri­to­ry is “off-lim­its” and that the coun­try would stand with the Unit­ed States in op­pos­ing for­eign in­ter­fer­ence and threats from Venezuela. That de­c­la­ra­tion drew sharp crit­i­cism from the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment and state me­dia.

Mean­while, Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so yes­ter­day re­ject­ed an of­fer from for­mer For­eign Af­fairs and Cari­com min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne to as­sist the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in han­dling the diplo­mat­ic fall­out with Venezuela, dis­miss­ing the ges­ture as a “disin­gen­u­ous” at­tempt at po­lit­i­cal rel­e­vance.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Browne said, “I have reached out via se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cials/pub­lic ser­vants in the min­istry and via oth­er chan­nels, con­tacts I’ve had with­in the UNC, to in­di­cate that my­self and maybe oth­ers would be will­ing if there’s a word to help set­tle, et cetera, in the first stages.”

But in a re­sponse is­sued via What­sApp, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused Browne of en­gag­ing in po­lit­i­cal gim­mick­ry and chal­lenged him to in­stead to ac­count for unan­swered ques­tions sur­round­ing the con­tro­ver­sial case sur­round­ing firearms deal­er Brent Thomas.

“Maybe Amery can in­stead reach out to the Gov­ern­ment to give ad­vice on who were the PNM min­is­ters that par­tic­i­pat­ed in the kid­nap­ping of Brent Thomas from Bar­ba­dos,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, re­fer­ring to the Oc­to­ber 2022 re­moval of Trinida­di­an firearms deal­er Brent Thomas from Bar­ba­dos to Trinidad.

Thomas was de­tained in Bar­ba­dos and flown to Trinidad with­out a for­mal ex­tra­di­tion process, rais­ing con­cerns about re­gion­al le­gal pro­to­cols and prompt­ing an on­go­ing ju­di­cial re­view in T&T.

The Prime Min­is­ter said she would be far more in­ter­est­ed in Browne’s “ad­vice” on that mat­ter than in any un­so­licit­ed guid­ance on for­eign af­fairs.