DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge has de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s con­tin­ued use of a Unit­ed States–sup­plied radar sys­tem in­stalled at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go, as he al­so brushed aside ques­tions about the pos­si­ble pres­ence of US mil­i­tary per­son­nel and con­cerns over trans­paren­cy and na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Sturge said the radar sup­port would re­main in place in­def­i­nite­ly as au­thor­i­ties in­ten­si­fy ef­forts to com­bat drug traf­fick­ing and gun smug­gling.

“We would have the use of the radar for the fore­see­able fu­ture. I can’t give a de­fin­i­tive time­line. And the rea­son why we need it, um, we al­ready have a radar cen­tre but our radar sys­tems are some­what lim­it­ed.”

Sturge said the US-pro­vid­ed sys­tem pro­vides en­hanced sur­veil­lance ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

“The radar sys­tem pro­vid­ed by the US, they work with drone tech­nol­o­gy and satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions and so on. So that it of­fers a lot more than what we have. And that is need­ed at this point in time to achieve cer­tain ob­jec­tives, be­cause as you would ap­pre­ci­ate, the fleet, the Coast Guard’s fleet, is not what it should be. So, that we need the as­sis­tance, in terms of de­tec­tion, which would help us with the lim­it­ed fleet we have, it will help us to re­spond in a time­ly man­ner and in­ter­cept.”

Ten­sions rose when jour­nal­ists pressed the min­is­ter on the num­ber of US mil­i­tary per­son­nel cur­rent­ly in the coun­try.

“I will not dis­close the num­bers. That would be un­wise. I don’t think any­where that sort of in­for­ma­tion would be dis­closed be­cuse that is not in the pub­lic in­ter­est. Un­less you can tell me how the pub­lic would be well served by know­ing that. Un­til you could jus­ti­fy that, I wouldn’t be pro­vid­ing that in­for­ma­tion.”

When asked whether cit­i­zens had a right to know, Sturge chal­lenged the premise of the ques­tion.

“You have a right to know? You have a right to know? Where you get that right?”

He con­tin­ued: “Ok, it’s your coun­try. The fact that there are mil­i­tary per­son­nel here, does that take away from your sov­er­eign­ty? Or does it not add to your sov­er­eign­ty when the en­e­my would be per­sons, nar­co-traf­fick­ers, who we have not been able to con­tain over so many decades?”

Sturge framed the is­sue as a prac­ti­cal se­cu­ri­ty part­ner­ship rather than a sov­er­eign­ty ques­tion. He al­so de­mand­ed ev­i­dence of “the source” of the pub­lic’s right to know, re­peat­ed­ly ques­tion­ing the val­ue of dis­clos­ing US troop num­bers.

“I want to ask, what is the com­plaint in hav­ing them here? And how does that ben­e­fit you? How does that in­for­ma­tion ben­e­fit you? The num­bers?

“If I tell it to you in this fo­rum, would I not be telling the world at large? If I’m telling the world at large, would I not be telling the crim­i­nal el­e­ment? Is that a wise thing to do?”

Asked why such dis­clo­sure would be un­wise, Sturge said it was not pru­dent to re­veal op­er­a­tional strength to ad­ver­saries. He ar­gued the coun­try has been in a long-run­ning con­flict with nar­cotics traf­fick­ers.

“We have been at war since the 90s with nar­co­traf­fick­ers. We have been. And you’ve seen the ef­fects of that on this coun­try. And we have not been do­ing too well in terms of stem­ming the flow of drugs and guns in­to this coun­try.”

“The thing is, most of our mur­ders in this coun­try are drug-re­lat­ed, gang-re­lat­ed and the weapon of choice, firearms. And what they’re fight­ing over? They’re fight­ing ba­si­cal­ly over drug turf. So, if we’ve not been able to stem that over the last three decades or so, and we are get­ting as­sis­tance in do­ing it now, should I tell the nar­co-traf­fick­ers, ‘well, we have x amount of US per­son­nel here and this is where they are sta­tioned’, so that they’ll know how to con­duct their busi­ness? No. That’s not how it’s done.”

Al­so weigh­ing in, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der sug­gest­ed it would be dif­fi­cult to record who holds what ti­tle from the large num­ber of vis­i­tors ar­riv­ing in­to the coun­try for the fes­tiv­i­ties.

“We have en­ter­tained thou­sands of vis­i­tors here. Are we to look at them and say, ‘are you a this, are you that?’ We have a num­ber of vis­i­tors here. We are not go­ing to check per­sons to see how much per­sons are here. We want every­body to come here as vis­i­tors and en­joy them­selves. They had a ball.”

Mean­while, Sturge al­so said strength­en­ing mar­itime in­ter­cep­tion re­mains a pri­or­i­ty. He said sev­er­al ves­sels be­long­ing to the T&T Coast Guard have been re­paired and are back in ser­vice, and that ad­di­tion­al, small­er pa­trol ves­sels are be­ing sought.

He clar­i­fied that the ac­qui­si­tions would not in­clude large off­shore pa­trol ships, but rather ves­sels suit­ed to in­ter­cept­ing traf­fick­ers who use high-speed boats.