PM hails ‘excellent’ meeting with US general on security

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Is­sues of transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime and re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, with dou­bles as re­fresh­ments, were the main fea­tures of a closed-door, al­most two-hour meet­ing be­tween Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen­er­al Dan Caine and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Tues­day.

The Prime Min­is­ter de­clared the meet­ing as “ex­cel­lent”, while the US Em­bassy, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and even a state­ment from the top US mil­i­tary of­fi­cial’s web­site tout­ed the fo­cus on desta­bil­is­ing il­lic­it nar­cotics in the re­gion.

But as sev­er­al as­pects of the vis­it re­main un­clear, mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion and a for­mer mil­i­tary com­man­der are call­ing for trans­paren­cy in light of on­go­ing US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the South­ern Caribbean against nar­co-traf­fick­ers main­ly from Venezuela.

The meet­ing, which was an­nounced on Mon­day, just one day pri­or to Gen­er­al Caine’s ar­rival, was re­port­ed by the US Em­bassy in T&T to fo­cus on “strength­en­ing re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty, and re­gion­al uni­ty on the vi­tal im­por­tance of coun­ter­ing il­lic­it traf­fick­ing and transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions.”

Caine’s vis­it to T&T and meet­ing with Per­sad-Bisses­sar came im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter a sim­i­lar vis­it to Puer­to Ri­co on Mon­day, where he met with US troops sta­tioned on the is­land.

The vis­it al­so came one day af­ter the US State De­part­ment of­fi­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro as a mem­ber of a For­eign Ter­ror­ist Or­gan­i­sa­tion— Car­tel de Los Soles.

Caine ar­rived in T&T via an of­fi­cial US Air Force Boe­ing air­craft at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Sources con­firmed that he was first es­cort­ed to the US Em­bassy in Queen’s Park West and then to the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, where he ar­rived just af­ter 11.30 am.

The Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was es­cort­ed by mul­ti­ple po­lice units, in­clud­ing the Spe­cial Branch, the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Task Force (NOTF) and the Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol Branch on po­lice mo­tor­cy­cles.

Ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty was al­so pro­vid­ed by the US-based Diplo­mat­ic Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices (DSS) in un­marked ve­hi­cles.

Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers from var­i­ous agen­cies kept close watch of the cen­tre as Caine and Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­cussed mat­ters re­lat­ing to se­cu­ri­ty pri­vate­ly.

Caine’s se­cu­ri­ty en­tourage was then seen leav­ing the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre around 12.56 pm, be­fore leav­ing the coun­try.

A me­dia re­lease from the Joint Chiefs of Staff web­site re­port­ed that both Caine and Per­sad-Bisses­sar shared their views on re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges, in­clud­ing “the desta­bil­is­ing ef­fects of il­lic­it nar­cotics, arms, and hu­man traf­fick­ing, and transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion ac­tiv­i­ties.”

Caine al­so not­ed that T&T’s part­ner­ship with the US would pro­mote re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and thanked Per­sad-Bisses­sar for her sup­port, while vow­ing con­tin­ued part­ner­ship to­wards ad­dress­ing “shared threats.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, via her of­fi­cial X (for­mer­ly Twit­ter) ac­count, in a short mes­sage de­scribed the meet­ing as “ex­cel­lent” as she not­ed that the US and T&T con­tin­ued to share a strong part­ner­ship.

In a sep­a­rate post, a pho­to of Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Caine eat­ing dou­bles was shared, as she not­ed that Caine had heard of the lo­cal del­i­ca­cy be­fore his vis­it.

“I hap­pi­ly made sure he got to en­joy the taste for him­self dur­ing his vis­it to­day,” she wrote.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, one De­fence Force of­fi­cial said that while he was not aware of what was dis­cussed at the meet­ing, he be­lieved it dealt with mat­ters be­yond tar­get­ing transna­tion­al crim­i­nal groups and drug smug­gling.

Re­fer­ring to re­cent­ly con­clud­ed train­ing ex­er­cis­es be­tween the T&T De­fence Force and the US 22nd Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit (MEU) be­tween 16 and 21 No­vem­ber, the of­fi­cial said the tim­ing of the meet­ing raised eye­brows.

“We have nev­er done mil­i­tary train­ing ex­er­cis­es dur­ing the hur­ri­cane and rainy sea­son.

“It’s al­ways the first half of the year.

“Ex­act­ly why would the most se­nior mil­i­tary of­fi­cer in the USA come to talk to the Prime Min­is­ter, and it’s just re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty?”

Dur­ing the Op­po­si­tion’s me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter and PNM chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les urged the Gov­ern­ment to make clear the na­ture of the meet­ing and what was dis­cussed.

He not­ed that while diplo­mat­ic ties be­tween the US and T&T were not new, the vis­it of such a high-rank­ing of­fi­cial to the coun­try war­rant­ed clear mes­sag­ing from the Gov­ern­ment. He warned that fail­ure to com­mu­ni­cate the facts could lead to un­ease and mis­in­for­ma­tion.

“You have held im­por­tant bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions with a very se­nior mil­i­tary head, and we ex­pect you, Madame Prime Min­is­ter, to speak to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go on these very im­por­tant mat­ters.

“Be­cause when you do so, the blog­gers and so­cial me­dia com­men­ta­tors will get in­for­ma­tion wher­ev­er it is, and they will speak to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go when there is a vac­u­um of in­for­ma­tion.”

Re­fer­ring to De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge’s re­fusal to re­spond to ques­tions posed by him­self dur­ing last week’s Low­er House sit­ting, Gon­za­les said there was a need for him to be open with the pub­lic on such mat­ters, as it could po­ten­tial­ly af­fect this coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty.

“My re­sponse is to beg, to ask and ask the Prime Min­is­ter to in­struct her min­is­ters of Gov­ern­ment to stop hid­ing and shield­ing them­selves from the stand­ing or­ders of Par­lia­ment and to com­mu­ni­cate facts and truth to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge sev­er­al times yes­ter­day, but there was no re­sponse.

And Coast Guard Lt Cm­dr and po­lit­i­cal leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) Nor­man Din­di­al said he was not con­vinced that the pur­pose of the meet­ing was sole­ly to dis­cuss com­bat­ing transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime.

He said that Caine, be­ing a high-rank­ing US mil­i­tary of­fi­cial, would not be sent to a meet­ing with a head of state for such mat­ters, as there were oth­er US-based law en­force­ment agen­cies that would ad­dress these con­cerns.

“The chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Chiefs of Staff them­selves do not have di­rect over­sight or con­trol over crime-fight­ing ac­tiv­i­ties or drug smug­gling op­er­a­tions with­in the Unit­ed States.

“If the vis­it is about law en­force­ment and crime re­duc­tion, you could have sent the Drug En­force­ment Agency, the De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, the De­part­ment of Jus­tice.

“The fact that the head of the Joint Chiefs is per­son­al­ly com­ing to meet with the Prime Min­is­ter and his pri­ma­ry role and func­tions are to ad­vise on mat­ters of war makes it trou­bling.”

Din­di­al al­so warned that such a meet­ing, giv­en on­go­ing mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es and re­gion­al ten­sion be­tween the US and Venezuela, could be per­ceived as the US mil­i­tary ex­pand­ing clos­er to main­land South Amer­i­ca.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said the sig­nif­i­cance of the trip can­not be over­stat­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly as T&T finds it­self “ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly and po­lit­i­cal­ly po­si­tioned in the mid­dle of an in­ter­na­tion­al fall­out be­tween Venezuela and the Unit­ed States.”

Speak­ing on CNC3 News last evening, Mo­hammed ex­plained that the vis­it sig­nals the del­i­cate mo­ment the re­gion is now nav­i­gat­ing.

“It’s not sim­ply a mat­ter of shak­ing hands, hav­ing dou­bles and smil­ing,” Dr Mo­hammed re­marked. “When some­one of that se­nior­i­ty ar­rives, it’s about strat­e­gy, tact­ful­ness, and in some cas­es, dis­clo­sure.” He em­pha­sised that as a sov­er­eign state and as a coun­try that holds re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty re­spon­si­bil­i­ties with­in CARI­COM, T&T must be ful­ly in­formed of any ac­tiv­i­ty in­volv­ing for­eign pow­ers with­in its bor­ders, es­pe­cial­ly where Venezue­lan in­ter­ests are con­cerned.

The tim­ing of the vis­it has sparked spec­u­la­tion glob­al­ly about whether the US is prepar­ing for mil­i­tary ac­tion against Venezuela. Mo­hammed dis­missed the sug­ges­tion of an im­mi­nent at­tack, call­ing the idea “strong and spec­u­la­tive.”