Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

With re­ports of Unit­ed States mis­sile fire on a mar­itime tar­get linked to Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang - killing 11 on board - T&T Cari­com Am­bas­sador Ralph Maraj has praised the “wel­come new mo­men­tum” in T&T-US re­la­tions, which he said de­vel­oped un­der Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

And US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio yes­ter­day told US me­dia that the drugs on the boat, which was de­stroyed in the south­ern Caribbean, were “prob­a­bly head­ed to Trinidad or some oth­er coun­try in the Caribbean.”

This, af­ter T&T be­came part of the Unit­ed States’ in­ter­na­tion­al coali­tion against drug car­tels launched re­cent­ly by the Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in its crack­down against car­tels in the south­ern Caribbean.

The US un­leashed four war­ships and a nu­clear-pow­ered sub­ma­rine in the past two weeks. The fleet in­cludes de­stroy­ers armed with mis­siles, air as­sets and 4,500 sailors, in­clud­ing sig­nif­i­cant Ma­rine forces.

In the US’ first known op­er­a­tion yes­ter­day, Reuters quot­ed Trump say­ing the US had struck a drug-car­ry­ing boat with a lot of drugs in it. Trump claimed the drugs came from Venezuela and the ves­sel’s crew were mem­bers of the TDA gang. He showed footage from over­head drones of the in­ci­dent

Trans­mis­sion showed the ves­sel churn­ing through the sea, then be­ing hit dead-on by the mis­siles, and blaz­ing. But Trump pro­vid­ed no proof to sup­port claims of who the mem­bers on board were.

Ru­bio, on X, stat­ed the boat had de­part­ed from Venezuela and a “lethal” strike oc­curred in the south­ern Caribbean.

The Glob­al Mil In­fo (GMI) site on X showed a trans­mis­sion of the ex­er­cise on a pirogue-like boat. It stat­ed that a US MQ-9 Reaper armed with AGM-114 Hell­fire mis­siles ex­e­cut­ed a pre­ci­sion strike “on a mar­itime tar­get linked to the Venezue­lan crim­i­nal syn­di­cate Tren De Aragua”

GMI stat­ed, “The strike de­stroyed the ves­sel and elim­i­nat­ed 11 nar­co-ter­ror­ists on board.”

Venezue­lan of­fi­cials told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, “We don’t know if that re­port is true or not... that ves­sel is a pirogue - it’s lu­di­crous that the ‘su­per­pow­er’ US is boast­ing about this.”

The video was heav­i­ly cir­cu­lat­ed by T&T Gov­ern­ment mem­bers.

Maraj, in his press re­lease, cit­ed state­ments by US Sec­re­tary of State Ru­bio of the “close part­ner­ship” be­tween T&T and the US and Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­sponse “reaf­firm­ing the en­dur­ing bonds” be­tween both coun­tries. Maraj al­so not­ed T&T’s place, along with Guyana and cer­tain Latin Amer­i­can states, in the US’ coali­tion against drug car­tels.

Maraj said T&T’s re­la­tion­ship with the US is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant.

“This is the world’s su­per­pow­er, our most pow­er­ful al­ly, largest trad­ing part­ner and main source of for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment. We must pre­serve and strength­en that re­la­tion­ship, which was sig­nif­i­cant­ly dam­aged dur­ing the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion,” he said.

“One re­calls Row­ley go­ing on the ex­ces­sive of­fen­sive, thun­der­ing in par­lia­ment ‘I take um­brage. I take um­brage at the Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador mak­ing a pub­lic state­ment crit­i­cis­ing the ac­tions of the Gov­ern­ment of T&T. And as far as tak­ing in­struc­tions from the US Em­bassy on Mar­li Street, leave the PNM out of that!’, sup­port­ed by PNM MPs jeer­ing, ‘What Trump could do we?!’

“Rhetoric and re­ac­tion for a po­lit­i­cal ral­ly at Pig­gott’s Cor­ner, not the diplo­mat­ic are­na! Over the past four months, Trinidad and To­ba­go has left that ap­proach far be­hind.”

Cit­ing ex­pres­sions of sol­i­dar­i­ty T&T’s re­ceived from the US, Cari­com and al­so from in­di­vid­ual Caribbean neigh­bours, Maraj said Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett, in a mes­sage for T&T’s 63rd In­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary, said the re­la­tion­ship “re­mains strong” be­tween Cari­com and T&T.

“This is a most con­struc­tive en­vi­ron­ment for T&T in the hemi­spher­ic neigh­bour­hood. We pur­sue in­di­vid­ual in­ter­ests whilst main­tain­ing re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty,” he added, up­hold­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s align­ment with the US’ ini­tia­tive with­out Cari­com con­sul­ta­tions.

“In­deed, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing with Grena­da’s PM Dick­on Mitchell for joint ef­forts in en­er­gy. And in send­ing In­de­pen­dence greet­ings to T&T, Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali said his coun­try val­ues deeply the bonds of friend­ship with T&T and looks for­ward to strength­en­ing these ties in the years ahead. It’s a har­mo­nious, dy­nam­ic en­vi­ron­ment that bodes well for T&T in its re­gion­al and hemi­spher­ic re­la­tions,” Maraj added.