DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

De­spite a new sal­vo of crit­i­cism from the Venezuela gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers is re­as­sur­ing the pub­lic that re­la­tions be­tween T&T and its neigh­bour re­main strong and sta­ble.

The as­sur­ance fol­lows Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s warn­ing that dead­ly force could be used against uniden­ti­fied ves­sels en­ter­ing Trinida­di­an wa­ters from Venezuela. Her state­ment came in the wake of al­le­ga­tions by Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro that a Colom­bian para­mil­i­tary group, along­side one Trinida­di­an, at­tempt­ed to en­ter his coun­try via T&T re­cent­ly. The group was said to have had plans to desta­bilise the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment.

Yes­ter­day, Sobers met with Venezuela’s Am­bas­sador to T&T, Ál­varo Sánchez Cordero, dur­ing a pre-sched­uled cour­tesy call at the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs in Port-of-Spain.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Sobers again re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion from the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment on any T&T na­tion­als who may be de­tained in con­nec­tion with the al­leged desta­bil­i­sa­tion plot.

Speak­ing af­ter­wards, Sobers re­it­er­at­ed that two diplo­mat­ic notes were sent to Cara­cas last week, in ad­di­tion to oth­er cor­re­spon­dence from T&T’s em­bassy in Venezuela. How­ev­er, he con­firmed those ef­forts had yield­ed lit­tle re­sponse.

Nev­er­the­less, Sobers said, “There’s ab­solute­ly noth­ing for the pub­lic to be con­cerned about with re­spect to Venezuela or any type of in­ter­ven­tion.”

Sobers al­so ad­dressed ques­tions sur­round­ing his per­ceived si­lence dur­ing last week’s me­dia con­fer­ence where Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised the mat­ter, say­ing diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment had been un­der­way from the out­set.

“Diplo­mat­ic chan­nels would have been en­gaged from the be­gin­ning. I would have been in­volved in terms of speak­ing to the em­bassy in Cara­cas and giv­ing in­struc­tions to them to reach out to their coun­ter­parts in Cara­cas to ob­tain cer­tain in­for­ma­tion. That had been on­go­ing since last week Tues­day, when we first be­came ap­prised and aware of this in­ci­dent. To say that the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs was not in­volved at all would be to­tal­ly un­true.”

Sobers not­ed that Venezuela, as a sig­na­to­ry to the Vi­en­na Con­ven­tion (Ar­ti­cle 36), is ob­lig­at­ed to no­ti­fy T&T if one of its na­tion­als is de­tained.

The min­is­ter said the Venezue­lan am­bas­sador yes­ter­day com­mit­ted to en­gag­ing with of­fi­cials in Cara­cas and ex­pressed a will­ing­ness to share the re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion.

Sobers un­der­scored that Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to ex­haust all diplo­mat­ic ef­forts to find a peace­ful so­lu­tion.