Renu­ka Singh

The US State De­part­ment has sug­gest­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go with­draw from the Rio Treaty if it is not will­ing to abide by de­ci­sions made by the mem­ber coun­tries.

The di­rec­tive came from the US State De­part­ment yes­ter­day as it re­spond­ed to con­tin­u­ing ques­tions on the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two coun­tries af­ter T&T re­fused to abide by amend­ments to the treaty made last year in re­la­tion to the vis­it of Venezuela Vice-Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez.

“Trinidad flout­ed this de­ci­sion by al­low­ing (Del­cy) Ro­driguez in­to the coun­try. If Trinidad and To­ba­go does not want to abide by treaty terms, maybe it should with­draw,” the US State De­part­ment said in a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia.

The US State De­part­ment has said be­fore that it be­lieved T&T broke the treaty by al­low­ing Ro­driguez in­to the coun­try for a meet­ing on COVID-19-re­lat­ed mat­ters. But this is the first time this arm of the US gov­ern­ment has called on T&T to with­draw from the 73-year old agree­ment if it was in­tent on main­tain­ing its sov­er­eign­ty on mat­ters in­volv­ing the Nico­las Maduro-led Venezuela regime.

The US State De­part­ment’s stance adds an­oth­er lay­er to the weeks-long de­bate about the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two coun­tries since the March 27 meet­ing be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Ro­driguez.

Both Row­ley and For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Den­nis Moses are on record say­ing that T&T is not bound by the tenets of the De­cem­ber 2019 Rio Treaty vote and that the coun­try was in­stead abid­ing by the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly and Cari­com stance that recog­nised the le­git­i­ma­cy of the Maduro regime.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the US State De­part­ment said it was “con­cerned” Moses would make such a state­ment.

“We are con­cerned that the Trin­bag­on­ian For­eign Min­is­ter as­sert­ed that his coun­try is not bound by the Rio Treaty, a 73-year old pact which Trinidad joined in 1967,” the State De­part­ment said.

When Rio Treaty mem­bers vot­ed to abide by more sanc­tions placed on Venezuela by the Unit­ed States in De­cem­ber 2019, T&T ab­stained from the vote while Uruguay vot­ed against it. The vote passed by a 16-1 ma­jor­i­ty.

The US State De­part­ment made it clear that al­though T&T ab­stained from that vote the coun­try is still bound to the agree­ment.

“Trinidad ab­stained from the vote but as a mem­ber was nev­er­the­less bound by the de­ci­sion. Mea­sures un­der Ar­ti­cle 8 ap­proved by 2/3 of par­ties are bind­ing on all,” the US State De­part­ment said.

Ar­ti­cle 8 of the treaty states that “for the pur­pos­es of this treaty, the mea­sures on which the Or­gan of Con­sul­ta­tion may agree will com­prise one or more of the fol­low­ing: re­call of chiefs of diplo­mat­ic mis­sions; break­ing of diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions; break­ing of con­sular re­la­tions; par­tial or com­plete in­ter­rup­tion of eco­nom­ic re­la­tions or of rail, sea, air, postal, tele­graph­ic, tele­phon­ic, and ra­diotele­phon­ic or ra­diotele­graph­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions; and use of armed force.”

Mes­sages to both Row­ley and Moses on the lat­est US State De­part­ment stance went unan­swered Mon­day. Row­ley al­so de­clined calls.

For the past three weeks, there have been dif­fer­ing views on whether T&T vi­o­lat­ed the Rio Treaty. Both US Am­bas­sador Joseph Mon­del­lo and the US State De­part­ment had main­tained the treaty was vi­o­lat­ed be­fore Row­ley and Moses not­ed T&T was ob­serv­ing the stance tak­en at the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly and Cari­com lev­els.

Last Thurs­day, at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Row­ley al­so said he had no in­ten­tion of with­draw­ing from the Rio Treaty. He al­so re­played a video clip from Oc­to­ber 2019, when he re­turned to the coun­try from a UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly meet­ing. In that clip, Row­ley said there were some who re­gard­ed the Rio Treaty as “out­dat­ed.”

At that press brief­ing, Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment dis­agreed with the Unit­ed States’ in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the treaty in jus­ti­fy­ing ac­tion against Venezuela.

“If we’re not ac­cept­ing (Juan) Guaidó as the pres­i­dent of Venezuela, it fol­lows that we can’t ac­cept Guaidó’s ap­pointees at the OAS or any­where else for that mat­ter,” Row­ley said then.

Not­ing that Venezuela was T&T clos­est neigh­bour, Row­ley said his stance on the is­sue was in T&T’s best in­ter­est, es­pe­cial­ly if things went “pear-shaped.”

Govt should weigh op­tions—ex­pert

Re­tired in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions lec­tur­er Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les yes­ter­day the lat­est call for Trinidad and To­ba­go to with­draw from the Rio Treaty may put the coun­try in an “awk­ward’ po­si­tion but said leav­ing may not be a bad thing.

“It is up to us to de­cide whether the treaty is in our in­ter­est. But I am not re­al­ly sure that that treaty is re­al­ly of much use, I think that treaty is out­dat­ed,” Gon­za­les said.

Gon­za­les said most of the Cari­com part­ners were not part of the Rio Treaty and the Ba­hamas and Haiti are the on­ly two that joined as well.

“If we get­ting in­volved in all of these tan­gles with peo­ple forc­ing us to sign on to things which are not in our in­ter­est, then it might be in our in­ter­est to come out of it,” he said.

He said it was on­ly in times of so­cial up­heaval that T&T would ben­e­fit from be­ing a part of the Rio Treaty.

“The ben­e­fit is on­ly in the event that you are at­tacked by an­oth­er coun­try that you can call up­on the oth­ers to help you de­fend your coun­try but that was rel­e­vant in the con­text where you had a cold war and it was felt that the Rus­sians were com­ing in­to the hemi­sphere and would prob­a­bly at­tack,” he said.

“But that has be­come passe now, I don’t think any­body is look­ing to come in­to the hemi­sphere here and at­tack any­body.”

Gon­za­les al­so said if an­oth­er coun­try in the hemi­sphere de­cid­ed to at­tack T&T, he was sure we would be able to find al­lies to as­sist.

“I can’t see the rel­e­vance of a treaty that is harp­ing that you have to fol­low the de­sires and wish­es of one coun­try,” he said.

“I know oth­er coun­tries with­drew and I haven’t seen any neg­a­tive fall­out from them com­ing out. They feel freer, they are not tied in­to com­mit­ments that may not be in their in­ter­ests so we have to sit down and look at that.”

The Rio Treaty

The Rio Treaty, oth­er­wise known as the In­ter-Amer­i­can Treaty of Rec­i­p­ro­cal As­sis­tance, is an agree­ment be­tween coun­tries in the West­ern Hemi­sphere as part of a mu­tu­al de­fence sys­tem.

The treaty pro­vides for mu­tu­al as­sis­tance if an act of ag­gres­sion threat­ens the peace of the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

Back in Sep­tem­ber, the sig­na­to­ries met to dis­cuss and vote on whether to em­ploy the re­gion­al treaty to im­pose sanc­tions on Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro.

In that meet­ing, con­vened by the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Amer­i­can States, 16 of the 19 sig­na­to­ries agreed to abide by the Rio Treaty and sup­port­ed us­ing the agree­ment to col­lab­o­rate on law en­force­ment op­er­a­tions and eco­nom­ic sanc­tions against Maduro and his as­so­ciates.

T&T ab­stained from vot­ing at that meet­ing but the coun­try is still bound by the agree­ment. Uruguay vot­ed against it and Cu­ba was ab­sent.