Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

A for­mer se­nior of­fi­cer in the Coast Guard is call­ing for "cool­er heads" to pre­vail amidst con­tin­ued ten­sion be­tween T&T and Venezuela.

Ear­li­er this week, Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro re­port­ed that a group of "ter­ror­ists" con­sist­ing of Trinida­di­ans and Colom­bians were ar­rest­ed try­ing to en­ter the coun­try on June 2.

Maduro claimed the group en­tered Su­cre on the east­ern edge of Venezuela car­ry­ing a cache of weapons and claimed it was part of a plot to desta­bilise the coun­try's econ­o­my.

Dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge firm­ly de­nied the claims, in­sist­ing that there was no ev­i­dence to sug­gest that Trinida­di­ans were in­volved in any such plot.

She al­so warned that this coun­try's de­fence force was pre­pared to de­fend T&T's bor­ders with "dead­ly force" if nec­es­sary.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, ret'd Lt Cm­dr Nor­man Din­di­al said the Gov­ern­ment should not pro­voke fur­ther ten­sion with Venezuela and be­lieves that the Prime Min­is­ter may have "jumped the gun" in her re­sponse.

He sug­gest­ed that in­stead of fu­elling un­ease through threats of mil­i­tary ac­tion, the Gov­ern­ment should in­stead as­sem­ble a team to con­duct a fact-find­ing ex­er­cise to ver­i­fy whether Trinida­di­ans ar­rest­ed in­tend­ed to stir un­rest.

Re­fer­ring to past op­er­a­tions where T&T have col­lab­o­rat­ed with Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties in de­tain­ing per­sons sus­pect­ed of trav­el­ling abroad to fight for ter­ror­ist groups, Din­di­al said it was in the best in­ter­est of both coun­tries to work to­geth­er to pre­vent any blood­shed.

"We can use this op­por­tu­ni­ty right now to use both our in­tel­li­gence agen­cies to get in­to Venezuela and speak with their coun­ter­parts over there and de-es­ca­late the sit­u­a­tion and find out what's re­al­ly hap­pen­ing.

"If it is true that we re­al­ly have Trinida­di­ans in ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ty leav­ing here to go to Venezuela, we need to know that. We can't be de­fend­ing it blind­ly.

"And we al­so need to let them (the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment) know that if there are Venezue­lans com­ing in from dif­fer­ent gangs, where are the loops and routes they are us­ing to get in­to T&T un­de­tect­ed?"

Dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said he spoke with Chief of De­fence Staff Air Vice Mar­shall Dar­ryl Daniel, who re­port­ed that the coastal radar sys­tem did not "pick up" any ac­tiv­i­ty de­scribed by Maduro.

Din­di­al, who worked at the Na­tion­al Radar and Sur­veil­lance Cen­tre while in the Coast Guard, said while the radar sys­tem may not have de­tect­ed any un­usu­al ac­tiv­i­ties, there were ar­eas that could be used by smug­glers to avoid arous­ing sus­pi­cion.

He said this high­light­ed the need for clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion with Venezuela.

"You don't know if they took ad­van­tage of ar­eas where there are gaps in the sys­tem; that's all the more rea­son to go and col­lab­o­rate with Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties to see what in­for­ma­tion they do have.

"If you find out from the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties where they passed, we'll be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to know."

Din­di­al has al­so worked with Venezuela's main in­tel­li­gence agency, SE­BIN (Bo­li­var­i­an Na­tion­al In­tel­li­gence Ser­vice), while work­ing on transna­tion­al traf­fick­ing and or­gan­ised crime poli­cies.

Re­fer­ring to the Prime Min­is­ter's warn­ing that the de­fence force would de­fend T&T with vi­o­lence, Din­di­al said while Coast Guard of­fi­cers were with­in their right to de­fend them­selves, he said they would not open fire on in­com­ing ves­sels with­out just cause.

"The dead­ly force rhetoric is tak­ing us out of the realm of re­al­i­ty.

"You have to use just the ap­pro­pri­ate amount of force; you don't want to es­ca­late things to the point where an­oth­er coun­try is see­ing you as be­ing bel­liger­ent."

He al­so warned that if de-es­ca­la­tion was un­suc­cess­ful, T&T was not mil­i­tar­i­ly pre­pared to wage war with Venezuela.

"We would have to look to the US for sup­port for that.

"The hard­ware and equip­ment the Venezue­lans have far out­num­bers what we have. They have fight­er jets; we don't even have a he­li­copter, so we have to be very care­ful how we tread."