DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Sean Sobers has voiced con­cern over fresh al­le­ga­tions by Venezuela’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter, Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, about at­tempts to desta­bilise his gov­ern­ment and im­pli­cat­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, while tak­ing aim at Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Ca­bel­lo, speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence on Thurs­day, said Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties had dis­man­tled a right-wing ter­ror­ist plot in Plaza Venezuela, Cara­cas, in­volv­ing plans to det­o­nate an ex­plo­sive de­vice. He claimed two al­leged ter­ror­ists were in­volved — one in­tend­ing to es­cape in­to Colom­bia and the oth­er in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go. He al­so said T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter will say it’s a lie “but it is her prob­lem.”

In re­sponse yes­ter­day, Sobers told Guardian Me­dia that Gov­ern­ment first learned of the al­le­ga­tions via me­dia re­ports and not of­fi­cial diplo­mat­ic chan­nels via the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment or its em­bassy here in Port-of-Spain. How­ev­er, he said they are tak­ing Ca­bel­lo’s com­ments se­ri­ous­ly.

“The first thing we did last night (Thurs­day) would have been to in­struct the head of Chancery in Cara­cas to send a note to Cara­cas it­self, en­quir­ing about the sit­u­a­tion. Es­pe­cial­ly if it is, in fact, a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sue, so that we can for­ward what­ev­er in­for­ma­tion they pro­vide us to the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­is­ter of De­fence,” Sobers said.

Asked whether Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties should ad­dress such mat­ters di­rect­ly with the T&T Gov­ern­ment rather than mak­ing them pub­lic first, Sobers said that de­ci­sion lies en­tire­ly with Cara­cas.

“It’s very im­por­tant that all par­tic­i­pants with­in this par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion should ex­er­cise some de­gree of care in terms of what is said, and what is not said, and what is done, and what steps are adopt­ed there­after. But I would not want to com­ment on how Venezuela choos­es to — and I dare not do that. I mean, they’re a sov­er­eign state — how they choose to re­lease in­for­ma­tion is sole­ly up to them and with­in their own dis­cre­tion.”

Re­gard­ing a pre­vi­ous Venezue­lan claim that it had de­tained a T&T na­tion­al linked to the desta­bil­i­sa­tion plot, Sobers con­firmed a name was pro­vid­ed by Cara­cas and vet­ted by lo­cal au­thor­i­ties but said de­tails re­mained sen­si­tive.

On June 4, Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro al­leged that an armed group of men at­tempt­ed to en­ter Venezuela from T&T. The next day, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar told the na­tion there was “cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly” no ev­i­dence to sup­port the claim, and warned Maduro that any uniden­ti­fied ves­sel in T&T’s wa­ters would face “dead­ly force.” Ca­bel­lo lat­er dis­missed her re­marks as “crazy.”

When asked for an up­date on that mat­ter, Sobers would on­ly say, “So, what we re­ceived was some cor­re­spon­dence back from Cara­cas with re­spect to a par­tic­u­lar name of an in­di­vid­ual. We would have run some checks on the name... be­cause it’s still at a very sen­si­tive point, I won’t be able to di­vulge cer­tain in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to that po­si­tion at this junc­ture. But the rel­e­vant diplo­mat­ic and pro­to­col chan­nels have been en­gaged as it per­tains to the in­for­ma­tion we re­ceived.”

Ef­forts to con­tact Venezuela’s am­bas­sador Al­varo Sanchez Cordero were un­suc­cess­ful.

He al­so ad­dressed con­cerns about the ab­sence of a T&T am­bas­sador in Cara­cas, say­ing ap­point­ments are be­ing han­dled with cau­tion.

“It’s def­i­nite­ly not a snub to Venezuela. We’re just ex­er­cis­ing due dili­gence. And we have over, what, 19 mis­sions in to­tal. So, we are tak­ing our time at it, but we are con­duct­ing due dili­gence to make sure the most suit­able, most qual­i­fied peo­ple are ap­point­ed in these po­si­tions.”

He not­ed that to date, Gov­ern­ment had ap­point­ed on­ly Ralph Maraj as Am­bas­sador to Cari­com and Dr Neil Parsan to New York.