Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) for­eign min­is­ters are urg­ing the Unit­ed States to pro­vide an as­sur­ance that any mil­i­tary ac­tion aimed at Venezuela will not threat­en re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty or oc­cur with­out pri­or con­sul­ta­tion and warn­ing.

Last week, the Unit­ed States or­dered an am­phibi­ous squadron to the south­ern Caribbean as part of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ef­fort to ad­dress threats from Latin Amer­i­can drug car­tels.

A nu­clear-pow­ered at­tack sub­ma­rine, ad­di­tion­al P8 Po­sei­don re­con­nais­sance air­craft, sev­er­al de­stroy­ers and a guid­ed-mis­sile cruis­er have al­so be­ing al­lo­cat­ed to US South­ern Com­mand as part of the mis­sion.

Venezuela has since re­spond­ed to what it termed the threat posed by the Unit­ed States and has it­self mar­shalled its troops along its bor­ders.

CARI­COM for­eign min­is­ters met last week and while there has been no of­fi­cial state­ment by the Guyana-based CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at re­gard­ing the out­come of their de­lib­er­a­tions, Bar­ba­dos’ For­eign Min­is­ter, Ker­rie Sym­monds told the Bar­ba­dos TO­DAY on­line pub­li­ca­tion that the meet­ing “was de­signed to ad­dress this is­sue among some oth­er.

‘We set­tled that a let­ter should be writ­ten, and in fact has been draft­ed by Dr Den­zil Dou­glas, who is the chair of the Con­fer­ence of For­eign Min­is­ters, and as you know Dr Dou­glas is a five-time prime min­is­ter in St Kitts. And the let­ter is be­ing sent to Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio.

“What ef­fec­tive­ly we are try­ing to do is to work through the diplo­mat­ic chan­nels of mak­ing sure that there are no sur­pris­es and prac­tices, so that you get no­ti­fi­ca­tion wher­ev­er it is fea­si­ble for ac­tions that are go­ing to have a fore­see­able re­gion­al im­pact; and that equal­ly, that we are able to re­view from time to time, the na­ture of the di­a­logue which we are hav­ing,” Sym­monds said.

He ac­knowl­edged that some ac­tions may be clas­si­fied or legal­ly con­strained and that it is im­por­tant to have more ro­bust di­a­logue on these is­sues.

“In that way we avoid mis­un­der­stand­ings and we can main­tain and strength­en our mu­tu­al con­fi­dence with each oth­er.” Sym­monds said, adding that he had seen the draft of the let­ter and that it should have been sent off by now.

The Bar­ba­dos For­eign Min­is­ter said that there are two ma­jor con­sid­er­a­tions for the re­gion with re­gard to the US mil­i­tary pres­ence off Venezuela.

“The pres­ence of the mil­i­tary ar­ma­da from the Unit­ed States gives rise to the threat to the tra­di­tion­al­ly held pos­ture or po­si­tion of the Caribbean Sea as a zone of peace. And I don’t think at this point that there is any rea­son to be­lieve that there is any change in that. What we have seen is a clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed fo­cus by the Unit­ed States on the ques­tion of drugs and guns."

“And to that ex­tent, I be­lieve we all would want to be par­ty to sup­port­ing that be­cause, to the ex­tent that it would be suc­cess­ful, it helps us to solve prob­lems in Bar­ba­dos, in Trinidad, in Guyana and across this re­gion.”

He said close­ly re­lat­ed to the ques­tion of il­le­gal drugs in the re­gion is al­so the is­sue of il­le­gal firearms.

“And to the ex­tent that that is a prob­lem, then Bar­ba­dos is ful­ly sup­port­ive of any ef­fort which seeks to in­ter­dict the move­ment of il­le­gal firearms, be­cause, as you know, this coun­try has been fac­ing that prob­lem, and it is a scourge, not on­ly on us, it is a scourge on our neigh­bours in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and I think they are still un­der a pub­lic health emer­gency.”

Sym­monds re­called that CARI­COM lead­ers re­cent­ly held sev­er­al meet­ings dur­ing which they ad­dressed il­le­gal gun crime as a pub­lic health is­sue.

“We have met at the lev­el of the Heads of Gov­ern­ment with the chief jus­tices of the re­gion be­cause it is nec­es­sary for the courts to un­der­stand and for the Heads to un­der­stand what is go­ing through the minds of the ju­di­cia­ry and vice ver­sa. So, there have been a num­ber of ob­vi­ous ef­forts to bring a spe­cif­ic fo­cus on this type of mat­ter."

“Where there is prob­a­bly a lit­tle bit of day­light or the ap­pear­ance of day­light, is that the prime min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go has in­di­cat­ed, very open­ly, that the on­ly peo­ple who should be wor­ried about the ac­tiv­i­ties of the US mil­i­tary are those who are en­gaged in en­abling crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. And per­haps, the way she put it is what is the root of this prob­lem.”

On Tues­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar Tues­day wel­comed the at­tack by the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary on an al­leged Venezuela-based drug ves­sel, say­ing “il­le­gal­ly traf­ficked drugs and arms have caused death and de­struc­tion in our so­ci­ety over the last 25”.

Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump told a news con­fer­ence that the strike on the ves­sel oc­curred in the south­ern Caribbean and his Sec­re­tary of State, Mar­co Ru­bio, de­scribed the op­er­a­tion as a “lethal strike” against a ves­sel op­er­at­ed by a des­ig­nat­ed nar­co-ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad Bisses­sar, who has open­ly sup­port­ed Wash­ing­ton’s war on drugs in the Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, said she had  “no sym­pa­thy for traf­fick­ers” and that the US mil­i­tary should “kill them all vi­o­lent­ly.

“I, along with most of the coun­try, am hap­py that the US naval de­ploy­ment is hav­ing suc­cess in their mis­sion.”

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos, Sept 3, CMC –

CMC/ah/ir/2025