Em­bat­tled Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro has not ap­proached Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley or the T&T Gov­ern­ment about a po­ten­tial me­di­a­tion meet­ing be­tween him and Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do in this coun­try.

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter said that if this sug­gest­ed then this coun­try would be open to such a meet­ing as he ex­plained that Cari­com had of­fered to be a neu­tral ground for talks for Venezue­lan of­fi­cials.

“If to­day he is say­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go or any Cari­com coun­try is that place it goes back to our of­fer,” said Row­ley at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. “I heard the Uruguayans al­so have made them­selves avail­able in a sim­i­lar man­ner,” he added.

The Prime Min­is­ter ad­dressed the mat­ter up­on his re­turn from a meet­ing with the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil in New York. He ex­plained that dur­ing the meet­ing Cari­com pre­sent­ed their con­cerns about the po­ten­tial con­flict in the re­gion fol­low­ing re­cent de­vel­op­ments in Venezuela.

The al­ready tense sit­u­a­tion in the South Amer­i­can coun­try grew even more volatile last week af­ter Gui­do an­nounced him­self pres­i­dent on the grounds that Maduro’s was not prop­er­ly elect­ed in keep­ing with the Venezue­lan con­sti­tu­tion.

The sit­u­a­tion has seen sev­er­al coun­tries around the world mak­ing pro­nounce­ments as to which regime they recog­nise with the Unit­ed States and sev­er­al Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries who have called them­selves the LI­MA 14, recog­nis­ing Guai­do as the Venezue­lan pres­i­dent. Rus­sia, Chi­na and Turkey, how­ev­er, have come out in sup­port of Maduro.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Unit­ed States, Rus­sia and Chi­na were all present dur­ing the meet­ing and hear the con­cerns of Cari­com, the Prime Min­is­ter said.

“These drums of war, that were rat­tling from Venezuela to Wash­ing­ton were be­ing pound­ed by per­sons who ei­ther have not tak­en us in­to ac­count or dis­re­gard our in­ter­est and the con­se­quence of their ac­tions on the Caribbean. Bar­ba­dos was ex­treme­ly strong in point­ing out that once we get in­to a sit­u­a­tion where the south­ern Caribbean be­comes an area of con­flict be­tween our neigh­bours and part­ners of this way it would noth­ing but harm to the econ­o­my in the re­gion,” said Row­ley who added: ‘Tourists re­al­ly don’t leave home to go to war zones on va­ca­tion.”

Row­ley said the coun­try’s po­si­tion con­cern­ing the Venezue­lan lead­er­ship was that of non-in­ter­fer­ence, as was Cari­com’s.

He, in par­tic­u­lar, slammed the Op­po­si­tion for their stance, stat­ing that it em­bar­rassed the coun­try as they ap­proached the UN.

“It would have been eas­i­er if the op­po­si­tion had seen the prin­ci­ple on which the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go was stand­ing in lead­er­ship with Cari­com be­cause that is prin­ci­pal that pro­tects small states more than any oth­er. We can­not be con­ve­nient with prin­ci­ple,” he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the Venezue­lan sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ued to be a con­cern, but he said it was in every­one’s best in­ter­est that it doesn’t es­ca­late to use of force.

He said, “Whether the causative fac­tors are as a re­sult of in­ter­nal po­lit­i­cal in­suf­fi­cien­cies or ex­ter­nal pres­sures and agen­das that’s not the point. The point is the Venezue­lan sit­u­a­tion as a per­ma­nent sit­u­a­tion is un­ac­cept­able, to all of us,” said Dr. Row­ley, “To get up one morn­ing and say the time for talk is over, that is where the dan­ger lies. Clos­ing the door to di­a­logue is not an op­tion and nev­er has been an op­tion.”

The Prime Min­is­ter de­scribed the mis­sion to ad­dress the UN as a suc­cess and said Mex­i­co and Uruguay were in­ter­est­ed in hold­ing talks with Venezuela to set­tle the mat­ter.