Dominica willing to serve as mediator in US-Venezuela conflict, says Skerrit

Do­mini­ca’s Prime Min­is­ter Roo­sevelt Sker­rit said Mon­day that his coun­try is pre­pared to act as a me­di­a­tor in the cur­rent con­flict be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela, re­it­er­at­ing that the Caribbean re­gion should al­ways be a zone of peace.

Speak­ing at the end of year news con­fer­ence, PM Sker­rit told re­porters that Do­mini­ca and the wider Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) re­gion is urg­ing “di­a­logue and diplo­ma­cy” to deal with the sit­u­a­tion, giv­en that “there would be an im­pact on every coun­try” should there be a war in the Caribbean.

“Do­mini­ca is a good friend of both the Unit­ed States and Venezuela, and in the past we have worked to­geth­er as an in­ter­me­di­ary,” he stat­ed, “and we are pre­pared to do so in this cur­rent sit­u­a­tion if there are mes­sages from ei­ther side to each oth­er.”

“Do­mini­ca be­lieves it is well placed to pro­vide that ser­vice. But we hope and pray that noth­ing hap­pens and the U.S. Pres­i­dent him­self has been in­volved in a num­ber of ne­go­ti­a­tions across the world and has used the U.S.’s in­flu­ence to bring a num­ber of con­flicts to an end,” Sker­rit said, adding “I would urge the Unit­ed States to draw up­on that tra­jec­to­ry to ad­vance that no­ble cause and ac­tions that he has been able to achieve over the years.”

Since Sep­tem­ber, the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has car­ried out a se­ries of mil­i­tary strikes off the coast of Venezuela, across the Caribbean and the East­ern Pa­cif­ic as part of what it terms the war on il­le­gal drugs.

But po­lit­i­cal ob­servers say Pres­i­dent Trump is in­volved in regime change in Cara­cas, giv­en his pub­lic state­ments made about Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro—whom he has la­belled as a nar­co-ter­ror­ist—and the build-up of mil­i­tary as­sets in the in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters near the South Amer­i­can coun­try.

The U.S. mil­i­tary has car­ried out sev­er­al hits on ves­sels, killing more than 80 peo­ple (in­clud­ing two Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als), with­out pro­vid­ing any proof that they were en­gaged in drugs.

The Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights al­so strong­ly con­demned the airstrikes car­ried out by the Unit­ed States against al­leged drug traf­fick­ing boats in the Caribbean and the Pa­cif­ic.

Volk­er Türk said in a state­ment that the strikes “vi­o­late in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights law”, de­mand­ing that they be stopped im­me­di­ate­ly.

Ear­li­er this month, the In­ter-Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion on Hu­man Rights (IACHR) has ex­pressed its “deep con­cern” re­gard­ing re­ports of lethal op­er­a­tions against non-state ves­sels or boats con­duct­ed by the Unit­ed States in the Caribbean Sea and the East­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean since ear­ly Sep­tem­ber.

The IACHR said that these op­er­a­tions have al­leged­ly re­sult­ed in the deaths of “a high num­ber of per­sons”. The or­gan­i­sa­tion urged Wash­ing­ton to en­sure that all se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing those car­ried out be­yond its bor­ders, “are con­sis­tent with in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights oblig­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing the pro­tec­tion of the right to life, the use of force, due process guar­an­tees, and ac­count­abil­i­ty mech­a­nisms”.

CARI­COM has al­so is­sued a state­ment re­it­er­at­ing the need for the re­gion to be a zone of peace, but the state­ment was not en­dorsed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment, whose Prime Min­is­ter has said that those in­volved in the il­le­gal drugs trade should be “killed vi­o­lent­ly”.

Re­gard­ing the pres­ence of the U.S. mil­i­tary in Caribbean wa­ters, Do­mini­ca’s Prime Min­is­ter Roo­sevelt Sker­rit told re­porters Do­mini­ca and the wider Caribbean have en­joyed “ex­cel­lent col­lab­o­ra­tion” with Wash­ing­ton in fight­ing il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties in the re­gion.

“The U.S. has been the num­ber one part­ner of Do­mini­ca and con­tin­ues to be, even to­day in terms of their in­vest­ment in Do­mini­ca for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty,” he said. He not­ed that a radar had been made avail­able to the is­land “to deal with our ma­rine spaces and that was re­cent­ly in­stalled.”

“There are a num­ber of oth­er ma­jor in­fra­struc­tur­al projects … that the Amer­i­cans are fi­nanc­ing … and oth­er mat­ters where na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is con­cerned. So on the is­sue of fight­ing crime and so on, the U.S. is our part­ner,” PM Sker­rit said.

“We al­ways main­tain that the Caribbean should be a zone of peace and that any thought of mil­i­tary ac­tions in the Caribbean should be re­con­sid­ered,” he said. “We be­lieve that di­a­logue and diplo­mat­ic chan­nels are bet­ter ways to solve prob­lems, dif­fer­ences, views that do not co­in­cide—and this is what we are urg­ing in the cir­cum­stance,” PM Sker­rit told re­porters.

He added: “Cer­tain­ly, if there is a break­out any­where in the Caribbean Sea it will have a neg­a­tive im­pact on all of us.” —ROSEAU, Do­mini­ca (CMC)