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Wednesday, May 7, 2025

PM gives limited details on meeting with Mondello

by

Renuka Singh
1804 days ago
20200529
US Ambassador to T&T Joseph Mondello.

US Ambassador to T&T Joseph Mondello.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is main­tain­ing his si­lence on much of what was dis­cussed at the May 20 meet­ing with US Am­bas­sador Joseph Mon­del­lo and is al­so stand­ing by this coun­try’s de­ci­sion not to abide by the amend­ed Rio Treaty pro­to­col re­gard­ing sanc­tions on Venezuela.

Row­ley al­so yes­ter­day de­nied that he had been hid­ing from the me­dia since the fall­out be­tween Mon­del­lo and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young be­came pub­lic knowl­edge on May 19.

The PM said he was the on­ly Prime Min­is­ter to make him­self so avail­able to the me­dia but then re­fused to re­spond to a ques­tion about his meet­ing with Mon­del­lo.

On May 22, Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Den­nis Moses re­vealed that Row­ley, Young and him­self met with Mon­del­lo but no de­tails of the meet­ing were giv­en.

Asked what tran­spired at the meet­ing, which came one day af­ter Mon­del­lo broke pro­to­col to say he ad­dressed the is­sue of T&T pos­si­bly break­ing the Rio Treaty by al­low­ing Venezuela Vice-Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez in­to T&T, Row­ley said, “I am not go­ing to re­spond to your ques­tion in the way that you put it.”

In­stead, Row­ley re­played the record­ing of his state­ments af­ter the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in Oc­to­ber 2019. In that record­ing, Row­ley talked about the clause in the Rio Treaty and said that Cari­com was res­olute that it was op­posed to mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion and sup­port­ed peace­ful res­o­lu­tion in Venezuela.

“I am not an­swer­ing you about what I told Mr Mon­del­lo, I am an­swer­ing you on what T&T told the world,” he said.

Row­ley al­so yes­ter­day stood by Moses’ state­ment in the Sen­ate on Tues­day that T&T was ad­her­ing to the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly and Cari­com stance which recog­nis­es the le­git­i­ma­cy of the Nico­las Maduro Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment.

“We do not recog­nise any gov­ern­ment in Venezuela oth­er than the gov­ern­ment that is recog­nised by the Unit­ed Na­tions,” he said.

When pressed on whether T&T’s po­si­tion on the Rio Treaty as it re­lates to Venezuela was ven­ti­lat­ed at the May 20 meet­ing with Mon­del­lo, the Prime Min­is­ter once again said, “I am not en­gag­ing in any dis­cus­sion with the Am­bas­sador, I went to the Unit­ed Na­tions, I went to the world.

“Last week you (me­dia) had a field day with the Am­bas­sador, I am not deal­ing with that be­cause the Am­bas­sador does not change what I said there.

“You spent the whole of last week on that, you had a pub­li­ca­tion from the US Am­bas­sador which you ex­er­cised your­self with whole week, you had a call for the res­ig­na­tion of the Min­is­ter, you had ed­i­to­ri­als on me.”

He added, how­ev­er, that he and Mon­del­lo speak all the time.

“We have no bar­ri­ers any­where,” he said.

How­ev­er, he did say the May 20 meet­ing with Mon­del­lo dis­cussed the five tankers that left Iran loaded with fu­el for Venezuela.

On May 13, the US Em­bassy wrote to Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Den­nis Moses alert­ing him of the tankers and warn­ing that any as­sis­tance met­ed out to the ves­sels could cre­ate “ex­po­sure to the en­force­ment of sanc­tions”. The meet­ing with Mon­del­lo came on May 20, one week af­ter that let­ter to Moses and one day af­ter the fall­out be­tween Mon­del­lo and Young over what tran­spired at their May 6 meet­ing.

How­ev­er, Row­ley said the warn­ing against as­sist­ing the Iran­ian ves­sels on­ly came about be­cause of the Op­po­si­tion “feed­ing” sto­ries to the me­dia.

“Noth­ing to do with us,” he said.

He in­sist­ed it was the Op­po­si­tion that alert­ed the US Em­bassy and fed the me­dia false sto­ries.

With re­gards to the Ro­driguez vis­it, Row­ley main­tained he on­ly met with two peo­ple from that del­e­ga­tion and the dis­cus­sion was on COVID-19, dur­ing which time he was of­fered COVID-19 test kits.

“I said I met with two Venezue­lans. One was Del­cy Ro­driguez, the oth­er was Mr Chavez, who was not the pres­i­dent of PDVSA and there­fore no one was in­tro­duced to me in that meet­ing as the pres­i­dent of PDVSA. I said that more than once,” he said.

“The Venezue­lans of­fered us test kits, we did not ac­cept it be­cause we did not want to run two par­al­lel sit­u­a­tions in the coun­try.”

He said they al­so dis­cussed keep­ing the bor­ders closed and pa­trols to keep il­le­gal mi­grants out of the coun­try.


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