Trinidad and Tobago joins Americas Counter Cartel Coalition

AKASH SAMA­ROO

Lead Ed­i­tor – Pol­i­tics

Trinidad and To­ba­go has joined a new­ly es­tab­lished mil­i­tary al­liance known as the Amer­i­c­as Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion.

The coun­try joined the al­liance af­ter Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump signed the Do­ral Char­ter at the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as sum­mit in Do­ral, Flori­da.

Ad­dress­ing the hand-picked in­vi­tees at the sum­mit, Pres­i­dent Trump said:

“The heart of our agree­ment is a com­mit­ment to us­ing lethal mil­i­tary force to de­stroy the sin­is­ter car­tels and ter­ror­ist net­works once and for all. We’ll get rid of them. We need your help.”

He added: “You have to just tell us where they are. We have amaz­ing weapon­ry, as you prob­a­bly no­ticed over the last short pe­ri­od of time.”

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who stood to the right of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump dur­ing the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny, re­ceived the pen used to sign the agree­ment from the US Pres­i­dent.

The sym­bol­ic ges­ture ap­peared to de­light the Trinidad and To­ba­go leader, who has re­mained stead­fast in her sup­port for the ex­pand­ing Unit­ed States mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Caribbean and the re­gion’s joint cam­paign against drug car­tels.

Pres­i­dent Trump told the lead­ers of the var­i­ous na­tions in at­ten­dance:

“I saw it so bad­ly, how you’re suf­fer­ing with what’s hap­pen­ing with the crime in the re­gion. And I said, if we ever come back, we’re go­ing to erad­i­cate that crime, and I’m go­ing to work with you, and if you want, we’re go­ing to do it, we can do it pret­ty eas­i­ly.”

The oth­er coun­tries present were Guyana, Paraguay, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Pana­ma, Hon­duras, El Sal­vador, Ecuador, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Chile, Bo­livia and Ar­genti­na.

Trump said: “The na­tions gath­ered here to­day are filled with un­lim­it­ed po­ten­tial. You have tremen­dous po­ten­tial. It’s a great, a great part of the world. But to ful­fil that tremen­dous po­ten­tial, we must smash the grip of the car­tels and crim­i­nal gangs and hor­ri­ble or­gan­i­sa­tions run by, in some cas­es, ab­solute an­i­mals, and tru­ly lib­er­ate our peo­ple. And some peo­ple are afraid to do it, be­cause it’s so, they’ve got­ten such a foothold. But I think you can get out of that, and we’ll work with you if you need.”