Raphael John-Lall

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has an­gri­ly de­nied that T&T has any in­ten­tions of al­low­ing US troops to set up base here to re­spond in case of in­sta­bil­i­ty in neigh­bour­ing Venezuela, as the Unit­ed States’ gov­ern­ment has stepped up pres­sure against Venezuela.

Speak­ing at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day at White­hall, Port-of-Spain, Row­ley said orig­i­nal­ly, he had no in­ten­tion of call­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence but said there were “se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions” gen­er­at­ed from a News­day ar­ti­cle head­lined “US can put troops in T&T,” which in­ac­cu­rate­ly re­port­ed that T&T and the US had signed an agree­ment which will al­low the US to de­ploy troops to T&T in the event of a pos­si­ble con­flict in Venezuela.

Row­ley de­scribed the ar­ti­cle as be­ing “whol­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble” and “dan­ger­ous in­com­pe­tence,” as it was send­ing a false mes­sage to the world, in­clud­ing Venezuela, Guyana and Cari­com.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the Sta­tus of Forces Agree­ment (SO­FA) re­ferred to in the ar­ti­cle was sep­a­rate and un­con­nect­ed to any is­sues be­tween the US and Venezuela.

“I am not dis­cussing the agree­ment, I am sim­ply say­ing that your in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the agree­ment, that the Unit­ed States can put troops in Trinidad and To­ba­go, is not what this is about … I’m sim­ply say­ing that your in­ter­pre­ta­tion … is wrong,” Row­ley said.

On what the SO­FA en­tails, he said, “It al­lows our se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies to have a re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States so as to im­prove the qual­i­ty of our ... that’s why we’re in­volved in it ... of our se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices.”

He al­so said T&T has a re­la­tion­ship with both the Unit­ed States and Venezuela.

“We don’t [have a volatile re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela], and we al­so have a very good re­la­tion­ship with the Unit­ed States. We op­er­ate as an in­de­pen­dent coun­try free to make our own for­eign pol­i­cy and treat with our as­so­ciates as our na­tion­al in­ter­ests dic­tate.”

Sup­port­ing his ar­gu­ment that T&T and Cari­com has al­ways been a “zone of peace,” the PM asked, “Why then, would you con­vert that firm stand of your coun­try to cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion?”

He al­so re­vealed that the Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young, had just re­turned from a trip to Venezuela.

He asked rhetor­i­cal­ly, “What has changed to cause Trinidad and To­ba­go to be a plat­form for for­eign troops on its ter­ri­to­ry in re­sponse to a Venezue­lan sit­u­a­tion?”

Ear­li­er this week, Row­ley met with US Am­bas­sador Can­dace Bond and Com­man­der of the US South­ern Com­mand (South­com) Ad­mi­ral Alvin Holsey at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain.

A state­ment from the US gov­ern­ment said Bond and Row­ley met to dis­cuss mat­ters in­volv­ing se­cu­ri­ty, en­er­gy and hu­man rights co­op­er­a­tion.

The is­sue comes just as the war of words be­tween Venezuela and Guyana is ris­ing.

Last month, the Unit­ed States recog­nised Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion leader Ed­mun­do González as the coun­try’s right­ful pres­i­dent-elect, fol­low­ing a Ju­ly elec­tion in which Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro was ac­cused by his op­po­nents of false­ly claim­ing vic­to­ry.

Ear­li­er this week, Maduro urged Cari­com to be wary of the de­signs of US South­ern Com­mand in Guyana, fol­low­ing a re­cent meet­ing be­tween Guyanese Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali with US mil­i­tary lead­er­ship.

Ten­sions be­tween Venezuela and Guyana in­creased in re­cent years due to oil ex­plo­ration by Guyana, to­geth­er with Exxon­Mo­bil, in the ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters of the dis­put­ed Es­se­qui­bo re­gion.

The in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia cir­cu­lat­ed in­for­ma­tion from the ar­ti­cle that pro­voked Row­ley’s ire.

Telesur, in its Span­ish edi­tion, re­port­ed, “Re­cent­ly, the gov­ern­ment of Guyana signed se­cu­ri­ty agree­ments with the Unit­ed States. Ne­go­ti­a­tions in this re­gard with T&T would con­firm Wash­ing­ton’s in­ten­tion to ex­pand in­ter­ven­tion­ism in the re­gion to harm the rev­o­lu­tion­ary process­es such as those in Venezuela, Cu­ba and Nicaragua, and to con­trol re­sources.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, who is a re­tired di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), said it was prob­a­ble that the me­dia house mis­un­der­stood the agree­ments be­tween T&T and the US.

“I am not clear what his po­lit­i­cal mo­tive was but it cer­tain­ly would send a wrong mes­sage to Venezuela. The Prime Min­is­ter had in­deed to clar­i­fy that. We have a se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion arrange­ment with the US that cov­ers a wide range of prob­lems plagu­ing the re­gion. The Venezue­lans would un­der­stand that. Ob­vi­ous­ly, if we al­low US troops on our soil to at­tack Venezuela, that would be an­oth­er mat­ter but that is not the in­tent of these agree­ments. The jour­nal­ist should have known bet­ter.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to the Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador to T&T, Ál­varo En­rique Sánchez Cordero, for a com­ment on the mat­ter but he de­clined.