US Secretary of War visits region today; Maduro officials hold closed door talks

Top US mil­i­tary of­fi­cials are meet­ing lead­ers of Caribbean na­tions this week as the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has es­ca­lat­ed its fire­pow­er in the re­gion as part of what it calls a cam­paign against drug traf­fick­ing.

War Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth will trav­el to San­to Domin­go, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, to­day to meet the coun­try’s top lead­ers, in­clud­ing Pres­i­dent Luis Abi­nad­er, Min­is­ter of De­fence Lt Gen Car­los An­to­nio Fer­nán­dez Onofre and oth­er of­fi­cials, the As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­port­ed yes­ter­day.

The an­nounce­ment came the same day that the Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar met yes­ter­day.

The US mil­i­tary has built up its largest pres­ence in the re­gion in gen­er­a­tions and has been at­tack­ing al­leged drug-smug­gling boats since Sep­tem­ber 2. To date, the mil­i­tary, un­der Hegseth’s com­mand, has car­ried out 21 known strikes on ves­sels said to be car­ry­ing drugs, killing at least 83 peo­ple.

Mean­while, Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment made no com­ment on the vis­it of the se­nior US mil­i­tary of­fi­cial to T&T, but the Venezue­lan De­fence Min­is­ter said the Gen­er­al Staff of the Bo­li­var­i­an Na­tion­al Armed Forces (FANB) held a meet­ing where they re­viewed the progress of the Ay­acu­cho Plan 2024-2030 for Venezuela’s mil­i­tary in­sti­tu­tions.

The meet­ing was al­so held to eval­u­ate the re­cent mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es that took place over the past few weeks, as Venezuela pre­pares it­self for a pos­si­ble US at­tack.

Last Fri­day and again on Sat­ur­day, Vladimir Padri­no López sent a strong mes­sage to T&T’s Gov­ern­ment that cur­rent mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es with the US demon­strat­ed an “ag­gres­sion” against Venezuela.

Venezuela’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, who harsh­ly crit­i­cised T&T’s Gov­ern­ment on a reg­u­lar ba­sis, al­so did not com­ment on Caine’s vis­it to T&T.

Re­ports out of Venezuela yes­ter­day said the coun­try’s Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro said the South Amer­i­can na­tion was “in­vin­ci­ble” af­ter he was des­ig­nat­ed the leader of a ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion by the US on Mon­day. - With re­port­ing by Raphael John-Lall