PM: Venezuela not discussed in meeting with top US military official

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says Venezuela was not on the agen­da dur­ing her meet­ing with Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen­er­al Dan Caine, the Unit­ed States’ high­est-rank­ing mil­i­tary of­fi­cer.

The Prime Min­is­ter said to her knowl­edge, the 250 marines from the 22nd Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit have left the coun­try.

Speak­ing with mem­bers of the me­dia out­side of the Red House yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was asked for more in­for­ma­tion on Tues­day’s meet­ing with Gen­er­al Caine. Fol­low­ing the talks, on­ly a short me­dia re­lease was sent out. But the Prime Min­is­ter said that summed up all that hap­pened.

“What I put out yes­ter­day, I can read it back to you. We had a very good meet­ing, very pleas­ant, bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions. We are both com­mit­ted to the nar­co-traf­fick­ing, against it, against the hu­man traf­fick­ing, against the drug run­ning. And that’s what we reaf­firmed in that meet­ing yes­ter­day,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

That meet­ing, which the Gov­ern­ment said the US re­quest­ed, came a day af­ter US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion de­clared that the Nico­las Maduro regime is a ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Guardian Me­dia there­fore asked the Prime Min­is­ter if the top­ic of Venezuela formed part of their dis­cus­sions.

“You will not be­lieve, the an­swer is no,” the Prime Min­is­ter re­spond­ed.

Asked if her Gov­ern­ment will al­so be seek­ing to fol­low the US and de­clare Maduro a ter­ror­ist, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “No, we have not gone down that path­way.”

The Prime Min­is­ter in the past said her Gov­ern­ment re­spects any coun­try’s le­git­i­mate­ly elect­ed leader, but again did not want to say if they recog­nise Maduro as Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent.

“I will tell you this: we stand with the peo­ple of Venezuela. We stand with the peo­ple of Venezuela.”

These ques­tions were al­so put to act­ing For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath. He said the Cab­i­net has not yet made those de­ci­sions.

“I think the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter has been very clear that we as a sov­er­eign na­tion de­ter­mine our own for­eign pol­i­cy, and there­fore that is a mat­ter that will have to be dis­cussed with­in the Cab­i­net,” Padarath said, adding that as of now, no de­ci­sion has been made on that mat­ter.

Mean­while, the Prime Min­is­ter said, as far as she is aware, the marines who came be­tween No­vem­ber 16-21 as part of a joint train­ing ex­er­cise with the De­fence Force have all left.

“I think they were sup­posed to leave yes­ter­day, if I’m not mis­tak­en.”

Asked if any US mil­i­tary as­sets, such as ves­sels or air­craft, are in this coun­try’s ter­ri­to­ry, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “Not to my knowl­edge. I see they are say­ing they have ves­sels in Trinidad wa­ters. I don’t know how you guys as­sess they are in Trinidad wa­ters. To the best of my knowl­edge, we were not re­quest­ed to have any of these ves­sels in Trinidad and To­ba­go wa­ters.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said there are peo­ple who are still at­tempt­ing to “fear mon­ger”, and she sought to as­sure the na­tion that she will con­tin­ue to be trans­par­ent.

“There is noth­ing to be afraid of at this time. When I do know that there may be things to be con­cerned about, I will let you all know.”

Be­fore the start of yes­ter­day’s sit­ting of the Low­er House, Venezue­lan ac­tivist Yese­nia Gon­za­lez pre­sent­ed the Prime Min­is­ter with a bou­quet of flow­ers to thank her for sup­port­ing the Unit­ed States.

A psy­chic, Gon­za­lez said, “I pre­dict­ed twice you were go­ing to be Prime Min­is­ter. As I said, she’s pro­tect­ed; she’s be­ing guard­ed by the right peo­ple. Amer­i­ca will pro­tect Trinidad. They will nev­er al­low any­thing bad to hap­pen here.”

Gon­za­lez was part of a small group of Venezue­lan mi­grants who came out­side of the Par­lia­ment to show their sup­port for Per­sad-Bisses­sar.