Venezuela Minister warns T&T, Guyana

Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Venezuela’s Min­is­ter of In­te­ri­or, Jus­tice and Peace, Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, has made it clear that the par­ty ful­ly sup­ports the de­ci­sion of the Bo­li­var­i­an gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly ter­mi­nate any con­tract or ne­go­ti­a­tion that in­volves the sup­ply of gas to T&T.

And he is warn­ing that Venezuela will re­tal­i­ate against T&T and Guyana if that coun­try is at­tacked by the US mil­i­tary.

He made these state­ments at the rul­ing Unit­ed So­cial­ist Par­ty of Venezuela’s (PSUV) week­ly press con­fer­ence in Cara­cas on Mon­day.

Af­ter read­ing the of­fi­cial state­ment re­leased on Mon­day by Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez, Ca­bel­lo, who is al­so the PSUV sec­re­tary gen­er­al, re­it­er­at­ed the “to­tal and ab­solute sup­port of the PSUV for the de­ci­sions that the na­tion­al gov­ern­ment has been tak­ing, in the face of the var­i­ous at­tacks that have been un­leashed against our coun­try by North Amer­i­can im­pe­ri­al­ism.”

Sub­se­quent­ly, he said this was a sov­er­eign de­ci­sion in the face of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s com­plic­i­ty with the il­le­gal acts of the Unit­ed States to steal Venezue­lan oil. Ca­bel­lo warned the gov­ern­ments of T&T and Guyana that “Venezuela’s home­land will re­spond to any ag­gres­sion against the Venezue­lan peo­ple.”

“We have said it, and we take full and ab­solute re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for this: Any ag­gres­sion against Venezuela, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Guyana, knows what our re­sponse will be, and they should know it too; we are not naive. We know where the at­tacks are com­ing from, how they are com­ing, and what bases they are us­ing to at­tack our peo­ple,” he point­ed out.

Ca­bel­lo, who has been very vo­cal about T&T’s in­volve­ment in the US ag­gres­sion to­wards his coun­try, called on the “com­plic­it gov­ern­ments” to as­sume their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the in­ter­ven­tion­ist ac­tions per­pe­trat­ed by the US ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He re­it­er­at­ed that T&T has lent its ter­ri­to­ry for the covert mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions car­ried out by the Unit­ed States in the Caribbean, vi­o­lat­ing in­ter­na­tion­al law.

How­ev­er, on Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­missed the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment’s ac­cu­sa­tion that T&T col­lud­ed with the US in the seizure of its oil tanker as “false pro­pa­gan­da.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said if the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment has a prob­lem with the seizure of the oil tanker “Skip­per,” then they should take it up with US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.