US military aircraft approved to transit Trinidad and Tobago

Akash Sama­roo

The Gov­ern­ment has grant­ed ap­proval for Unit­ed States mil­i­tary air­craft to tran­sit through the coun­try’s air­ports in the com­ing weeks.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease this morn­ing from the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, the move­ments are “lo­gis­ti­cal in na­ture” and will fa­cil­i­tate sup­ply re­plen­ish­ment and “rou­tine” per­son­nel ro­ta­tions.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers said the gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to sus­tained col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Unit­ed States, not­ing that the part­ner­ship has al­ready yield­ed tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits, in­clud­ing en­hanced sur­veil­lance ca­pa­bil­i­ties, joint mil­i­tary train­ing ex­er­cis­es, and the in­stal­la­tion of an ef­fec­tive radar sys­tem to aid in nar­cotics in­ter­dic­tion.

Sobers added that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has reaf­firmed the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s com­mit­ment to “co­op­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion in the pur­suit of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty for Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider re­gion.”

The Min­istry said the U.S. Em­bassy has al­so sup­port­ed lo­cal de­vel­op­ment through ed­u­ca­tion­al and in­fra­struc­ture ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing school equip­ment do­na­tions.