An­drea Perez-Sobers & Ke­jan Haynes

Con­tain­er op­er­a­tions at the Port of Port-of-Spain will be sus­pend­ed on sev­er­al berths from Oc­to­ber 26-30 to ac­com­mo­date the USS Grave­ly (DDG-107), a Unit­ed States Navy ves­sel sched­uled to ar­rive here on Sun­day.

This was con­firmed last evening in a re­lease by the Min­istry of Cari­com and For­eign Af­fairs, which al­so re­vealed that the 22nd US Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit will con­duct joint train­ing with the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) dur­ing the same pe­ri­od.

The ver­sa­tile US war­ship, with a crew of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 sailors, is ca­pa­ble of per­form­ing a range of mis­sions, in­clud­ing an­ti-air, an­ti-sur­face and an­ti-sub­ma­rine war­fare and is equipped with a five-inch can­non and ver­ti­cal launch­ing sys­tems for mis­siles.

The min­istry said the vis­it by the USS Grave­ly will strength­en US-T&T mil­i­tary-to-mil­i­tary co­op­er­a­tion through ex­pert ex­changes fo­cused on core in­fantry tac­tics, main­te­nance pro­ce­dures and ad­vanced med­ical ca­pa­bil­i­ties, lever­ag­ing the TTDF’s fa­cil­i­ties to en­hance tac­ti­cal pro­fi­cien­cy and en­hance mu­tu­al trust.

“These ef­forts strength­en in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty, re­in­force long-term de­fence co­op­er­a­tion, and im­prove op­er­a­tional readi­ness among part­ner forces,” the min­istry added.

The de­vel­op­ment comes amid height­ened US mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Caribbean, where the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has de­ployed air and naval forces to counter what it calls threats from Latin Amer­i­can drug car­tels. The Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion in Port-of-Spain has strong­ly sup­port­ed the move while deny­ing it is part of any co­or­di­nat­ed ef­forts to de­pose the Nico­las Maduro regime in neigh­bour­ing Venezuela.

Mean­while, in a no­tice to port users yes­ter­day, act­ing CEO Robert Ram­sub­hag said the port had been asked to berth the ves­sel dur­ing the pe­ri­od. As a re­sult, no con­tain­er op­er­a­tions will be al­lowed on Berths 6E, 6W, or 7.
Con­tact­ed last night, Ram­sub­hag said the ex­pect­ed ar­rival of a US naval ves­sel in T&T was noth­ing out of the or­di­nary, not­ing sim­i­lar arrange­ments had been made in the past with oth­er vis­it­ing mil­i­tary and hos­pi­tal ships.
He said the in­com­ing ves­sel has a deep draft, sim­i­lar to the US hos­pi­tal ship that docked here pre­vi­ous­ly, and port of­fi­cials have been work­ing through the nec­es­sary checks to ac­com­mo­date it safe­ly.
He not­ed that T&T reg­u­lar­ly re­ceives ves­sels from the US, the Nether­lands and the Unit­ed King­dom, and as a pub­lic port, the au­thor­i­ty is ob­lig­at­ed to fa­cil­i­tate such vis­its in co­or­di­na­tion with the rel­e­vant min­istries.

“We do this in good faith and in the in­ter­est of main­tain­ing strong re­la­tions with our in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners. It’s part of our Port Au­thor­i­ty Act, you can check that we fa­cil­i­tate any naval ves­sel,” he added.

Ship­ping agents and op­er­a­tors were al­so asked to re­view their plans and make al­ter­na­tive arrange­ments dur­ing the port clo­sure. The Port of Port-of-Spain said it will keep stake­hold­ers in­formed of any changes to the sched­ule.