Chester Sam­bra­no & An­na-Lisa Paul

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves has urged both Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela to ex­er­cise re­straint and re­solve their dif­fer­ences peace­ful­ly and in line with in­ter­na­tion­al law.

“All I would like to do is to urge both neigh­bours to con­tin­ue to act peace­ful­ly in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al law,” Gon­salves said in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

He warned against in­flam­ing the sit­u­a­tion with strong lan­guage. “As far as prac­ti­ca­ble, we do not in­cline the sit­u­a­tion with any ex­ces­sive rhetoric. We just take our pa­tience in­to ac­count. And what­ev­er is the prob­lem, we solve them ma­ture­ly be­tween two neigh­bours.”

Ten­sions be­tween T&T and Venezuela es­ca­lat­ed last week af­ter Venezue­lan Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo al­leged on his pro­gramme Con El Ma­zo Dan­do, that a Trinida­di­an by the name of “Guis Kendell Jerome” - had been cap­tured en route to Venezuela with a group la­belled “ter­ror­ists” in an at­tempt to desta­bilise their gov­ern­ment.

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials in this coun­try have since con­firmed that the per­son named by Ca­bel­lo had not ap­peared in T&T’s crim­i­nal data­base.

Dur­ing last Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net meet­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar added to the is­sue as she de­liv­ered a dead­ly warn­ing to Venezuela that T&T was off-lim­its.

She re­vealed that the T&T Coast Guard (TTCG) would have been placed on alert to use dead­ly force if any ves­sel from Venezuela sought to ac­cess lo­cal wa­ters il­le­gal­ly.

Per­sad Bisses­sar de­clared, “I want to make it very clear to the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment and of­fi­cials that they can do what­ev­er they want on Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry, but they can­not come here. T&T ter­ri­to­ry is off lim­its to them.”

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue yes­ter­day, the St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter was asked whether Cari­com should in­ter­vene in the de­vel­op­ing ten­sion, he replied, “Maybe not, maybe not as yet, but that’s why I’m urg­ing peace and calm.”

Gon­salves reaf­firmed Cari­com’s and the re­gion’s broad­er com­mit­ment to peace. “That would be what my own broad po­si­tion would do as some­one who sup­ports very much—and we all do, and Cari­com does, and so too does Venezuela—we sup­port our re­gion as a re­gion of peace. We want to see good neigh­bourli­ness.”

He cau­tioned against draw­ing in out­side forces. “If there is any chal­lenge which aris­es, we should not in­ter­fere in the in­ter­nal af­fairs of any oth­er state. We should not bring any for­eign pow­er in­to this par­tic­u­lar mat­ter. This is a mat­ter which we have to be care­ful that is not blown out of pro­por­tions.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to oth­er re­gion­al lead­ers in­clud­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne and Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley but all calls went unan­swered.

Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali was al­so con­tact­ed through a com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cial but no re­sponse was re­ceived up to news time.

Guyana has been at odds with Venezuela in a ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute over the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der said while this coun­try re­mains on high alert, com­mu­ni­ca­tion was key.

Ef­forts to con­tact De­fence Min­ster Wayne Sturge yes­ter­day on Sat­ur­day’s meet­ing with na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and law en­force­ment of­fi­cials to dis­cuss al­le­ga­tions of a lo­cal link to desta­bilise Venezuela were un­suc­cess­ful.

Alexan­der di­rect­ed all ques­tions to Sturge yes­ter­day, but would on­ly say that lo­cal law en­force­ment agen­cies had been placed on high alert.

“We are not look­ing for any­thing, but what I can tell you is that the se­cu­ri­ty forces are al­ways on the alert.

“So to say that they are on full alert now...it is just a nor­mal day in the life of these of­fi­cers.”

How­ev­er, he said there re­mained room for di­a­logue.

“At the end of the day, com­mu­ni­ca­tion is key and that might be able to re­solve a lot of these things go­ing on right now.”

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter, Sean Sobers did not re­spond to calls and mes­sages about Sat­ur­day’s ex­tra­or­di­nary meet­ing to de­cide how the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to ad­dress the es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions be­tween T&T and Venezuela.

On Fri­day, Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro urged Per­sad Bisses­sar to tone down the dead­ly force rhetoric used.

In a re­lease, the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties said the warn­ing and at­ti­tude by the Prime Min­is­ter was both vir­u­lent and high-hand­ed and al­so raised “se­ri­ous sus­pi­cions of com­plic­i­ty.”

He ad­vised that it on­ly, “Un­der­mines the good co­op­er­a­tive re­la­tions be­tween our coun­tries in key ar­eas.”