Persad-Bissessar leaves door open to deeper US military ties

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ex­pressed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an ad­di­tion­al Unit­ed States mil­i­tary pres­ence in this coun­try fol­low­ing the sum­mit with Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on March 7. And she has re­vealed that the US is pump­ing US$3 mil­lion dai­ly in­to the op­er­a­tions of the radar in To­ba­go.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali were this week in­vit­ed to the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as meet­ing in Flori­da. They will be joined by Latin Amer­i­can na­tions who have pub­licly de­clared them­selves al­lies of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side of the Red House in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, the Prime Min­is­ter was told there are con­cerns that this meet­ing will pave the way for a fur­ther US mil­i­tary pres­ence in the coun­try.

“Maybe, maybe not. I can’t pre-empt what will hap­pen at that meet­ing,” the PM re­spond­ed.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty are at the top of the sum­mit’s agen­da.

But she again sought to re­mind the pub­lic that mil­i­tary part­ner­ships with the US through the State of Forces Agree­ment (SO­FA) is not new.

“What I want to re­mind you, it was the for­mer prime min­is­ter who signed the SO­FA agree­ment which al­lows for that. I don’t know why it is a big is­sue. When that hap­pened, the agree­ment was al­ready signed when I in­her­it­ed the gov­er­nance of the coun­try.”

Asked if this puts the coun­try at the mer­cy of the US, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “We are not at the mer­cy of any­one ex­cept the good Lord. And the oth­er ones I am at the mer­cy of are the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. And I will do what I think is best, of course, with the ad­vice of the rest of my cab­i­net and oth­er stake­hold­ers. So, we are not at the mer­cy. We can say no, we can say yes.”

Piv­ot­ing to the US-in­stalled radar in To­ba­go, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed a new piece of in­for­ma­tion on the high-tech and con­tro­ver­sial equip­ment.

“I don’t know why there was such a big noise be­cause a few peo­ple were here from the US mil­i­tary in To­ba­go with the radar. You know they are pay­ing US$3 mil­lion a day for that radar. Not us. They are pay­ing that. There­fore, they kept some of their mil­i­tary per­son­nel there to en­sure that the radar would be safe.”

The Prime Min­is­ter ex­plained that the US$3 mil­lion per day is the US’ op­er­a­tional cost, which in­cludes salaries, ac­com­mo­da­tion and up­keep. That means in the 93 days since the radar was first spot­ted at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, main­tain­ing the radar would have so far cost the Unit­ed States US$ 279 mil­lion.

Asked how many US mil­i­tary per­son­nel are still in the coun­try, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “I still can’t say how many be­cause they are leav­ing in groups. And I am told some­time in March they are propos­ing to leave.”

How­ev­er, she added that it is not a “mas­sive amount.”

But the Prime Min­is­ter said those sol­diers will not have any au­thor­i­ty over the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“From their in­tel­li­gence that they may gath­er, my un­der­stand­ing and what I’ve been told, is that they will ad­vise the TTPS, who will then pur­sue. There was a drug bust not too long ago. It was their in­tel­li­gence that al­lowed our TTPS to go in. So, they can’t come and ar­rest you un­less if you’re cuff­ing them down or some­thing.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said she has no re­grets for part­ner­ing with the US, as it helped curbed the mur­der rate in this coun­try. Told that there have been claims that it was the State of Emer­gency that led to that drop in homi­cides, she replied, “It is both, it is both.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so asked Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les for her com­ment on the Prime Min­is­ter say­ing there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a deep­er mil­i­tary arrange­ment with the US fol­low­ing the March 7 sum­mit.

“The Prime Min­is­ter say­ing maybe or maybe not is quite in­ter­est­ing be­cause at the end of the day, we still have not got­ten the to­tal de­tails as to ex­act­ly what has con­tin­ued,” Beck­les said.

How­ev­er, Beck­les said she does not agree that the US has helped T&T “tame” its mur­der rate.

“Clear­ly, that is not the case. If you look at the fig­ure to­day, the fig­ures sug­gest­ed for this month, you have more (mur­ders) than this time last month. And we are not aware ex­act­ly what is the role the Unit­ed States is play­ing at this time as it re­lates to crime in­ter­ven­tion.”