DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

More than 24 hours af­ter meet­ing with Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador Ál­varo Sánchez Cordero, Trinidad and To­ba­go is still await­ing an of­fi­cial re­sponse from the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties re­gard­ing the iden­ti­ty of a pur­port­ed na­tion­al re­port­ed­ly in their cus­tody.

Last Wednes­day, Venezue­lan Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, speak­ing on the tele­vi­sion pro­gramme Con El Ma­zo Dan­do, al­leged that a Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al was in­volved in “ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ties” aimed at desta­bil­is­ing Venezuela on June 2.

Speak­ing in Span­ish, Ca­bel­lo held up a smart­phone and iden­ti­fied the in­di­vid­ual as “Gis Kendel Jheron”, an iden­ti­ty Trinidad and To­ba­go au­thor­i­ties have not yet con­firmed.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that he in­tends to send a third diplo­mat­ic note to the Venezue­lan am­bas­sador to­day, fol­low­ing the am­bas­sador’s fail­ure to pro­vide a re­sponse from of­fi­cials in his home coun­try.

Sobers said his last con­tact with Am­bas­sador Sánchez Cordero was around 4 pm on Mon­day, hours af­ter their cour­tesy call at the min­istry’s head­quar­ters. At that time, the am­bas­sador in­di­cat­ed he was still in the process of ob­tain­ing the re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion.

“If there is any ve­rac­i­ty to it, we will be pro­vid­ed with the par­tic­u­lars. But at this junc­ture, we have not been pro­vid­ed with any­thing,” Sobers said.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, diplo­mat­ic notes were dis­patched on June 3 and 4, en­quir­ing about the named in­di­vid­ual and oth­ers ac­cused of join­ing para­mil­i­taries to car­ry out a mil­i­tary in­cur­sion in­to Venezuela.

To date, no re­sponse has been re­ceived to a one-page diplo­mat­ic note sent by T&T’s em­bassy in Cara­cas on June 4 to Venezuela’s Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs.

Mean­while, in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions spe­cial­ist Mwale Hen­ry be­lieves T&T’s stance is be­ing shaped by US for­eign pol­i­cy, which he said was in­creas­ing­ly in­flu­enc­ing lo­cal pol­i­tics.

“I be­lieve that in this short pe­ri­od of this cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, you have seen over 13 en­gage­ments by the US em­bassy with many min­istry of­fi­cials, and maybe Cara­cas sees this a lit­tle too close for com­fort. I think there are too many strong winds that are blow­ing in our West­ern hemi­sphere that is caus­ing this ad­min­is­tra­tion to take a cer­tain pos­ture,” he said.

Hen­ry warned that if diplo­ma­cy fails, the cur­rent diplo­mat­ic row could in­flame ten­sions be­tween Venezue­lans and lo­cals in T&T.

“So, for in­stance, in the US, you have the Pres­i­dent (Don­ald) Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion tak­ing a very stri­dent stance be­tween Mex­i­co and the US with re­gards to its im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy. There are many mi­grants who live in the US. And you are see­ing now, be­cause of these types of ten­sions, the con­fla­gra­tion starts with­in its bor­ders, where there are Mex­i­cans who are join­ing protests.

“We have to be very care­ful from a prag­mat­ic stance that this is not just an ex­ter­nal threat pos­ture of us­ing the term ‘use dead­ly force on the seas’. But we have Venezue­lans who live amongst us who are part of our com­mu­ni­ty, legal­ly or not, and it would not be wise for us to cre­ate or add to that ten­sion, be­cause that ten­sion can oc­cur do­mes­ti­cal­ly for us.”

Hen­ry al­so crit­i­cised Venezuela’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter for re­fer­ring to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as “she” and la­belling her state­ments as “crazy”, call­ing the re­marks “un­can­ny and un­called for”.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence on Mon­day, Ca­bel­lo said T&T’s re­sponse was un­war­rant­ed fol­low­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­c­la­ra­tion that she was con­sid­er­ing the use of dead­ly force against any uniden­ti­fied ves­sel en­ter­ing T&T wa­ters from Venezuela.

“That woman’s state­ments are crazy, be­cause we’re not en­ter­ing Trinidad, nor are our boats en­ter­ing Trinidad. I don’t know what lethal forces they have, but it’s crazy, a crazy state­ment,” Ca­bel­lo said.

De­spite the ex­change of strong words, for­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ters have wel­comed what they view as a re­turn to diplo­ma­cy be­tween the two coun­tries.

Dr Amery Browne, who re­cent­ly of­fered his as­sis­tance to his suc­ces­sor, said the talks were long over­due.

“It is my hope and the hope of many of our cit­i­zens that this would al­low for a re­duc­tion of ten­sions, for the ap­pro­pri­ate col­lab­o­ra­tion, and a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the claims that were be­ing is­sued. That is what many stake­hold­ers in the na­tion­al and re­gion­al space have been ask­ing for, in­clud­ing the Op­po­si­tion.”

Win­ston Dook­er­an, who served as for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment be­tween 2012 and 2015, al­so wel­comed the re­newed di­a­logue and dis­missed the heat­ed rhetoric as a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“I think it was just an ex­pres­sion of words that was tak­en out of any ac­tu­al con­text of deeds. But I do agree that the rules of in­ter­na­tion­al law and con­ven­tions should be up­held.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that au­thor­i­ties in T&T are now try­ing to de­ter­mine ex­act­ly how many na­tion­als may cur­rent­ly be de­tained in Venezuela, amid re­ports that “a few more per­sons” may have been held in con­nec­tion with the same is­sue.

Sources con­firmed that with the change in gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, for­mer Am­bas­sador Ed­mund Dil­lon has re­turned to Port-of-Spain. How­ev­er, em­bassy staff re­main in Cara­cas.

Those fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter said they are hop­ing for a swift and peace­ful res­o­lu­tion, warn­ing that the cur­rent back-and-forth be­tween both coun­tries is un­pro­duc­tive and on­ly pro­long­ing un­cer­tain­ty.

Ef­forts to get a re­sponse from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar have so far been un­suc­cess­ful.