THA seeks clarity on U.S. radar installation

The Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary (OCS) of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly says it is seek­ing full clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment on the in­stal­la­tion of a Unit­ed States-sup­port­ed radar sys­tem at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, fol­low­ing pub­lic con­cerns trig­gered by com­ments from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Wednes­day.

In a me­dia re­lease, the OCS con­firmed that U.S. per­son­nel have been con­duct­ing works at the air­port, in­clud­ing the in­stal­la­tion of a radar sys­tem in­tend­ed to en­hance sur­veil­lance ca­pa­bil­i­ty. How­ev­er, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine stat­ed that he on­ly be­came aware of the Prime Min­is­ter’s con­fir­ma­tion af­ter com­plet­ing a live tele­vi­sion in­ter­view on To­ba­go Chan­nel 5 late Wednes­day. Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, his re­spons­es dur­ing that in­ter­view were based on the in­for­ma­tion avail­able to him at the time.

The Chief Sec­re­tary re­it­er­at­ed To­ba­go’s pos­ture of neu­tral­i­ty and stressed that while for­eign pol­i­cy de­ci­sions rest with the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, the THA re­mains fo­cused on en­sur­ing the sta­bil­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the is­land. He said he has since spo­ken di­rect­ly with the Prime Min­is­ter and re­quest­ed full de­tails on what is be­ing in­stalled.

The OCS in­di­cat­ed that a for­mal meet­ing in­volv­ing rel­e­vant Cab­i­net Min­is­ters and state agen­cies is now be­ing arranged to clar­i­fy the pur­pose, scope and op­er­a­tional im­pli­ca­tions of the radar in­stal­la­tion, along with any as­so­ci­at­ed mat­ters. The of­fice said it will up­date the pub­lic once those de­tails are pro­vid­ed.

The re­lease not­ed that the THA re­mains com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy and en­sur­ing the pop­u­la­tion is well-in­formed, par­tic­u­lar­ly amid what it de­scribed as height­ened re­gion­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty. It added that the OCS will con­tin­ue en­gag­ing with all stake­hold­ers and high­light­ed that diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ments with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of both Venezuela and the Unit­ed States re­main sched­uled.

The state­ment end­ed by as­sur­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans that the As­sem­bly will con­tin­ue mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion and com­mu­ni­cat­ing de­vel­op­ments as they arise.