Raphael John-Lall

Fol­low­ing the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment's state­ment yes­ter­day con­demn­ing T&T for al­leged­ly align­ing with the Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Agency (CIA) to desta­bilise Venezuela, Venezuela’s For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Yván Gil in a state­ment on Mon­day urged T&T not to be dragged in­to "a dirty war."

The US naval ship, the USS Grave­ly de­stroy­er which docked in T&T yes­ter­day pro­voked Venezuela’s Gov­ern­ment an­gry state­ment.

“Venezuela has clear­ly in­formed the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go about the CIA-led false flag op­er­a­tion: at­tack­ing an Amer­i­can mil­i­tary ship parked on that is­land and then blam­ing Venezuela, to jus­ti­fy an ag­gres­sion against our coun­try. It's the same im­pe­r­i­al script of the ship Maine and the Gulf of Tonkin: fab­ri­cate a con­flict to im­pose in­ter­ests out­side our re­gion," Gil’s state­ment on In­sta­gram said.

He con­tin­ued by say­ing that Venezuela acts firm­ly and re­spon­si­bly.

“In our ter­ri­to­ry,  a crim­i­nal cell fund­ed by the CIA linked to this covert op­er­a­tion is be­ing dis­man­tled. We hope that Trinidad and To­ba­go will do the right thing and not al­low their ter­ri­to­ry to be used for ma­noeu­vres that threat­en Caribbean peace.”

In a tone more mod­er­ate than Sun­day’s state­ment, Gil said Venezuela is hope­ful T&T will do the right thing.

“We re­spect the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and trust their con­science to pre­vent their coun­try from be­ing dragged in­to a dirty war op­er­a­tion.”

Fi­nal­ly, he said Venezuela will not be pro­voked.

“Venezuela will not fall in­to provo­ca­tions, but no one is con­fused: we will de­fend our sov­er­eign­ty with­out hes­i­ta­tion. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Caribbean and for his­to­ry: ei­ther sides with peace or sink in­to the CIA agen­da.”