Venezuela Interior Minister: Kamla’s statement is ‘crazy’

Venezue­lan's Min­is­ter of In­te­ri­or and Jus­tice, Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, has dis­missed state­ments by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on pos­si­ble threats of Venezue­lan mil­i­tary per­son­nel en­ter­ing T&T in pur­suit of al­leged ter­ror­ists.

Fol­low­ing claims last week by Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro that ter­ror­ists en­tered Venezuela from Trinidad and To­ba­go, Per­sad-Bisses­sar hit back at last Thurs­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence, call­ing on the Coast Guard to use 'dead­ly force' against any uniden­ti­fied ves­sel that en­tered T&T wa­ters from Venezuela.

Ca­bel­lo, speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence in Cara­cas Mon­day, called Per­sad-Bisses­sar's state­ment "crazy" and de­nied the ex­is­tence of any plan to in­vade the wa­ters of the Caribbean coun­try.

"That's crazy, the state­ments from that woman. We are not in­vad­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, nor have our ves­sels en­tered their ter­ri­to­ry. I don't know what force they have, but it's sense­less," Ca­bel­lo said.

He ar­gued that Cara­cas's re­al con­cern lies in the al­leged en­try of a "ter­ror­ist" group from Trinidad and To­ba­go, which his regime blamed for smug­gling weapons in­to Venezuela.

"This isn't a rea­son to at­tack the per­son re­port­ing the news; it's a rea­son to in­ves­ti­gate what's hap­pen­ing in Trinidad," he stat­ed.