Talk of US–Maduro meeting as MSJ to lead second peace vigil

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro spoke by phone last week and dis­cussed a pos­si­ble meet­ing, but none has been sched­uled, ac­cord­ing to the New York Times.

The NYT cit­ed in­for­ma­tion from peo­ple with knowl­edge of the sit­u­a­tion. The re­port said both pres­i­dents dis­cussed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of meet­ing “in the US”, but no date has been set.

This comes as the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues to in­crease mil­i­tary pres­sure on Venezuela. On Thurs­day, Trump told US troops that mil­i­tary bomb­ing strikes would be­gin on land in Venezuela very soon.

Re­ports quot­ed Trump as say­ing, “You prob­a­bly no­ticed that peo­ple aren’t want­i­ng to be de­liv­er­ing by sea, and we’ll be start­ing to stop them by land.....Al­so the land is eas­i­er, but that’s go­ing to start very soon.”

Since the US ad­min­is­tra­tion be­gan its mis­sion against drug car­tels in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber, a sit­u­a­tion which Venezuela and oth­ers view as cov­er for regime change in Venezuela, US forces have car­ried out strikes against more than 20 al­leged Venezue­lan drug-smug­gling ves­sels in the Caribbean Sea and east­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean. More than 80 peo­ple have so far been killed.

Last week­end, US me­dia re­port­ed that a new phase of Venezuela-re­lat­ed op­er­a­tions was be­gin­ning, which could in­clude the de­ploy­ment of covert units.

Mean­while, the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) and al­lied groups will hold a sec­ond Vig­il for Peace next Sun­day at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, warn­ing that re­cent de­vel­op­ments have made the is­sue ur­gent. The call comes af­ter US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s warn­ing that land strikes in Venezuela could be­gin “very soon.”

The first vig­il, held three weeks ago, urged the Caribbean to re­main a zone of peace amid ris­ing US–Venezuela ten­sions. Since then, the MSJ not­ed the ar­rival of the USS Ger­ald Ford and its flotil­la, re­peat­ed US Ma­rine de­ploy­ments to Trinidad and To­ba­go, of­fload­ing of mil­i­tary equip­ment in To­ba­go, and de­stroy­ers in the Gulf of Paria.

The group al­so high­light­ed the vis­it of Gen­er­al Dan Caine, Chair­man of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Which could not have been to eat dou­bles,” the MSJ said.

Ex­press­ing con­cern over the Prime Min­is­ter’s ex­pla­na­tions on US troops in To­ba­go and the air­port radar in­stal­la­tion, the MSJ added: “This is like­ly the radar sys­tem the US re­quest­ed Grena­da in­stall at the Mau­rice Bish­op In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, which has not been ap­proved. Was its in­stal­la­tion in To­ba­go re­quest­ed by Gen­er­al Caine? The US Pres­i­dent is close to de­cid­ing on an at­tack on Venezuela, and Gen­er­al Caine’s vis­it as­sessed US pre­pared­ness for that ac­tion.”

The MSJ warned that US mil­i­tary as­sets in To­ba­go make the is­land a po­ten­tial tar­get for Venezuela. “The pos­si­bil­i­ty of war is grow­ing rapid­ly,” the group said. “Gov­ern­ment de­ci­sions have made Trinidad and To­ba­go a war al­ly of the US, en­dan­ger­ing cit­i­zens, fish­er­folk, and busi­ness­es. Yet of­fi­cials have re­fused a clear, hon­est state­ment, of­fer­ing triv­ial ex­pla­na­tions about dou­bles and road paving at To­ba­go’s air­port.”