Sto­ries by Renu­ka Singh

“Undiplo­mat­ic lan­guage” by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and the par­ti­san noise of pol­i­tics sur­round­ing the re­cent vis­it of Venezuela Vice-Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez to Trinidad and To­ba­go has the po­ten­tial to dam­age the coun­try’s con­tin­ued re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States.

That’s the view of re­tired head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Regi­nald Du­mas and se­nior coun­sel Mar­tin Daly.

Both men yes­ter­day is­sued a joint state­ment ex­press­ing their “deep con­cern” about the cur­rent con­tro­ver­sy be­tween Young and US Am­bas­sador Joseph Mon­del­lo over Ro­driguez’s vis­it, which was a di­rect breach of the Rio Treaty on T&T’s part.

“Many of us say we are a sov­er­eign coun­try and can take our own de­ci­sions. That is cor­rect. But the USA too is a sov­er­eign coun­try, and can take its own de­ci­sions,” the duo said.

They said one of the de­ci­sions tak­en by the US is to ap­ply sanc­tions to Venezuela. They added that the US has “al­so made it clear that it will al­so ap­ply sanc­tions to those coun­tries, all equal­ly sov­er­eign, which vi­o­late its Venezuela sanc­tions.”

“Giv­en the po­lit­i­cal cli­mate in Wash­ing­ton, that is a pol­i­cy po­si­tion which can­not be ig­nored,” both men, con­sid­ered to be two of T&T lu­mi­nar­ies in their fields, said.

The two ques­tioned whether T&T is pre­pared to face sanc­tions if they come, es­pe­cial­ly at this time of eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ty. In any event, they said T&T should seek to mend the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.

“Can we, in turn, im­pose sanc­tions on the USA, as, for ex­am­ple, Chi­na can? But if re­la­tions be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and the USA are as pos­i­tive and strong as Gov­ern­ment spokesper­sons (Min­is­ter Young among them) say they are, should there not be qui­et dis­cus­sions be­tween the two par­ties?”

The men said they “strong­ly rec­om­mend that such dis­cus­sions be ini­ti­at­ed with a view to reach­ing mu­tu­al­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry so­lu­tions.”

The dis­cus­sion, they say, must re­spect both T&T’s sov­er­eign­ty and the for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tions.

Dur­ing a meet­ing of Up­per House on May 13, Young said dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with Mon­del­lo, “there was no rais­ing of the breach of any treaty.”

On Tues­day, how­ev­er, Mon­del­lo is­sued a rare state­ment con­tra­dict­ing Young and say­ing that dur­ing a May 6 con­ver­sa­tion be­tween the two, he did raise the Rio Treaty and ex­pressed his con­cern about the vis­it by Ro­driguez and T&T’s oblig­a­tion to the Rio Treaty.

Young re­spond­ed to Mon­del­lo’s state­ment lat­er on Tues­day, say­ing his com­ments were mis­con­strued and that he did not say that a breach of the Rio Treaty was not dis­cussed. Rather, Young not­ed he said the breach of the treaty was not raised, adding he did not be­lieve it was prop­er to pro­vide the de­tails of the dis­cus­sion.

Du­mas and Daly said they ex­am­ined Young’s state­ments both be­fore and af­ter Mon­del­lo’s press re­lease.

“We can­not avoid this com­ment: While Min­is­ter Young is pedan­ti­cal­ly in­sist­ing that the Am­bas­sador did not use the word “breach”, if the Am­bas­sador spoke of the “con­sis­ten­cy” of the Venezue­lan Vice-Pres­i­dent’s vis­it with Trinidad and To­ba­go’s oblig­a­tions un­der the Rio Treaty, what oth­er than a breach could he pos­si­bly have meant? Where was the mis­con­struc­tion?” they asked.

The mat­ter has not been of­fi­cial­ly ad­dressed since by ei­ther Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley or Young.

But Young has tak­en to his Face­book page to bash the three dai­ly news­pa­pers, say­ing they were try­ing to mis­lead the pub­lic by mis­quot­ing what he said at the Up­per House ses­sion.

Du­mas and Daly yes­ter­day said the rel­e­vance and ap­pli­ca­tion of the Rio Treaty to T&T, about which a num­ber of ex­perts have reser­va­tions, should now fig­ure promi­nent­ly in dis­cus­sions be­tween T&T and the US.

“In or­der to fa­cil­i­tate the pro­posed dis­cus­sions, we fur­ther rec­om­mend an im­me­di­ate ces­sa­tion of the mega­phone diplo­ma­cy that seems now to be in vogue,” they said.

The two said they have al­so “tak­en note” of the re­cent calls for Young’s dis­missal.

“We are in­deed dis­turbed by the re­cent con­tro­ver­sies in which he has placed him­self. None of this is good for T&T,” they said.

The com­ments from the two lu­mi­nar­ies came even as the Prime Min­is­ter’s deaf­en­ing si­lence con­tin­ued for yet an­oth­er day.

The last time the coun­try heard from the Prime Min­is­ter was on May 16 - that’s sev­en days ago to­day, when he an­nounced the sec­ond phase of re­open­ing of busi­ness­es.

On Wednes­day, Row­ley post­ed pic­tures of him­self gar­den­ing and re­leased a video of this as well and yes­ter­day he chaired the Cab­i­net meet­ing. But there was no press con­fer­ence and no word from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter as to when Row­ley planned to ad­dress the coun­try on this is­sue.

Last Sat­ur­day, Row­ley was asked about the Ro­driguez vis­it to this coun­try and de­clined a re­sponse, say­ing that was not the time for the is­sue to be dis­cussed. He did in­di­cate, how­ev­er, that it would be dealt with.

Since then the US Am­bas­sador has bro­ken pro­to­col and is­sued a pub­lic re­buke of com­ments made by Young in the par­lia­ment on the breach of the Rio Treaty.

Ef­forts to con­tact Row­ley yes­ter­day proved un­suc­cess­ful and his of­fice could of­fer no clar­i­fi­ca­tion on whether he in­tend­ed to speak to the is­sue any­time soon.