Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has led a del­e­ga­tion in­clud­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Den­nis Moses to talks with Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go Joseph Mon­del­lo, in an at­tempt to soothe trou­bled re­la­tions be­tween the su­per­pow­er and this coun­try.

The meet­ing came one day af­ter Mon­del­lo, on May 19 via a press re­lease, is­sued a pub­lic slap on the wrist to Young over a con­ver­sa­tion the two held on May 6 which dis­cussed the vis­it to T&T of Venezue­lan Vice-Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez in re­la­tion to the Rio Treaty.

In his press re­lease on the mat­ter, Mon­del­lo ad­mit­ted that he does not nor­mal­ly com­ment on pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions with host gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. But he said he felt he had to re­spond af­ter Young, on May 13 in re­sponse to a ques­tion in the Sen­ate, re­vealed some of the de­tails of their con­ver­sa­tion.

Mon­del­lo said, “I wish to af­firm that I ex­pressed con­cern to the Min­is­ter in that con­ver­sa­tion about the con­sis­ten­cy of Del­cy Ro­driguez’s vis­it to Port-of-Spain with T&T’s oblig­a­tions as a par­ty to the Rio Treaty. Ar­ti­cle 20 of the Rio Treaty makes it un­am­bigu­ous­ly clear that all mea­sures im­posed by the Or­gan of Con­sul­ta­tion—like the trav­el re­stric­tions on Ms Ro­driguez—are bind­ing on all treaty par­ties, whether or not they vot­ed in favour of such mea­sures.”

Young had told the Sen­ate on May 13 that “the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment’s head and top diplo­mat in T&T, that is the Am­bas­sador, not any un­der­ling who may or may not be speak­ing to the me­dia, the Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador, had a con­ver­sa­tion with me as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Cab­i­net-lev­el of the Gov­ern­ment and there were oth­er con­ver­sa­tions had and there was no rais­ing of the breach of any Treaty.”

The pub­lic spat prompt­ed two lu­mi­nar­ies, Mar­tin Daly SC and for­mer diplo­mat Regi­nald Du­mas, to call for an end to the mega­phone diplo­ma­cy, giv­en the neg­a­tive im­pact any bad re­la­tion­ship with the US could have on this coun­try. But it seems evens be­fore the Daly/Du­mas joint re­lease on Thurs­day, the Gov­ern­ment had al­ready en­gaged Mon­del­lo.

A press re­lease is­sued by the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs yes­ter­day stat­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter, in the com­pa­ny of Young and Moses on Wednes­day (May 20) held “ex­ten­sive and cor­dial dis­cus­sions with US Am­bas­sador Mon­del­lo and oth­er of­fi­cials from the US Em­bassy.”

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the dis­cus­sions were wide-rang­ing and in­clud­ed “Trinidad and To­ba­go’s de­sire to fur­ther pro­tect its mar­itime space.” It not­ed that the point was made that this coun­try was “con­strained by the lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty of suit­able off­shore ma­rine as­sets.”

To this end, the T&T del­e­ga­tion re­quest­ed from the Unit­ed States “the fur­ther shar­ing of any and all per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion which may come to its at­ten­tion with re­spect to any il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ty which may oc­cur with­in the ter­ri­to­r­i­al or deep ocean ar­eas over which T&T has ju­ris­dic­tion.”

The re­lease was clear that con­trary to “any view which might be prop­a­gat­ed in some quar­ters” in T&T that the re­la­tion­ship be­tween this coun­try and the Unit­ed States “is in jeop­ardy,” the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs can con­firm that “noth­ing is fur­ther from the truth.”

The re­lease not­ed that it was in fur­ther­ance of “our mu­tu­al in­ter­ests, but­tressed by re­spect for each oth­er’s sov­er­eign­ty and a clear un­der­stand­ing of each oth­er’s for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tions,” that T&T has “con­sis­tent­ly re­mained en­gaged with the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.”

It not­ed that high-lev­el con­tacts be­tween this coun­try’s Min­is­ters of For­eign Af­fairs, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Prime Min­is­ter “are fre­quent oc­cur­rences in the con­duct of our diplo­mat­ic co­op­er­a­tion.”

Just one day af­ter the vis­it of Ro­driguez and her del­e­ga­tion to this coun­try, Paria Fu­el Ship­ping Com­pa­ny start­ed dis­cus­sions with ES Eu­ro Ship­ping SA for sale of 150,000 bar­rels of fu­el, which was said to be bound for Aru­ba.

Track­ing of the ves­sel, the MT Al­dan, which loaded with the fu­el from Pointe-a-Pierre, shows that the sig­nal of the ves­sel dis­ap­peared af­ter it trav­elled 179 nau­ti­cal miles. Paria pub­lished a full-page ad­ver­tise­ment on Mon­day giv­ing de­tails of the con­tract and the care it took to en­sure that the ship­ment of fu­el was not go­ing to Venezuela but was, in fact, be­ing shipped to Aru­ba.

How­ev­er, the Aruban gov­ern­ment has told the T&T Guardian it does not know where the tanker went as it did not ar­rive in that coun­try.

“The MT Al­dan was not seen on Au­to­mat­ic Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem with­in the ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters and or the eco­nom­ic zone of Aru­ba.”

The Aruban gov­ern­ment al­so said it did not do any busi­ness with Paria Fu­el nor au­tho­rised any­one in that coun­try to do so on its be­half.

Checks on ma­rine sites yes­ter­day showed that the Al­dan had been deemed “de­com­mis­sioned” or “lost.” There has been no track­ing in­for­ma­tion avail­able on the ves­sel for 30 days.