The Unit­ed King­dom High Com­mis­sion based in Trinidad and To­ba­go has de­clined to com­ment on claims the UK gov­ern­ment stopped shar­ing in­tel­li­gence with the Unit­ed States about sus­pect­ed drug-traf­fick­ing ves­sels in the Caribbean.

In re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia about the CNN re­port, which al­leged that the UK had end­ed in­tel­li­gence shar­ing with Wash­ing­ton be­cause it did not want to be com­plic­it in what it viewed as il­le­gal US mil­i­tary strikes, the British High Com­mis­sion said, “We do not com­ment on mat­ters re­lat­ed to in­tel­li­gence. The US de­ploy­ment to the South­ern Caribbean is a mat­ter for the US. The US re­mains our clos­est al­ly and part­ner on se­cu­ri­ty glob­al­ly.”

Guardian Me­dia had  asked whether the UK had com­mu­ni­cat­ed any changes in its in­tel­li­gence-shar­ing pol­i­cy to re­gion­al gov­ern­ments, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, and whether it had any con­cerns about the le­gal­i­ty of US mil­i­tary in­ter­dic­tions in Caribbean wa­ters. 

CNN re­port­ed that the de­ci­sion, if true, would rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant break from the UK’s clos­est al­ly and re­flect grow­ing doubts about the le­gal­i­ty of the US cam­paign across Latin Amer­i­ca.

How­ev­er, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­missed the re­port as “fake news,” say­ing US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio had al­ready re­fut­ed it. She de­scribed the claims as a de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to un­der­mine re­gion­al an­ti-nar­cotics op­er­a­tions and reaf­firmed her Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to work­ing close­ly with the Unit­ed States to com­bat drug, gun, and hu­man traf­fick­ing.