Renu­ka Singh

The Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go Joseph Mon­del­lo broke pro­to­col yes­ter­day, is­su­ing a state­ment in which he all but ac­cused Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young of ly­ing about a con­ver­sa­tion which they had on May 6 about the vis­it of Venezuela Vice-Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez’s vis­it to T&T.

Mon­del­lo, via a press re­lease, said he did, in fact, dis­cuss T&T’s breach of the Rio Treaty with Young dur­ing the meet­ing. Mon­del­lo said he ex­pressed his “con­cern to the Min­is­ter in that con­ver­sa­tion about the con­sis­ten­cy of (Venezue­lan Vice-Pres­i­dent) Del­cy Ro­driguez’s vis­it to Port-of-Spain” and the coun­try’s oblig­a­tions to the Rio Treaty.

The US Am­bas­sador ac­knowl­edged the rar­i­ty of such a pub­lic re­sponse from an Am­bas­sador on a mat­ter dis­cussed with host gov­ern­ments.

“Nor­mal­ly, I do not com­ment on pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions with host gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials,” Mon­del­lo said.

How­ev­er, he “af­firmed” that he and Young did, in fact, dis­cuss the Gov­ern­ment’s March 27 meet­ing with Ro­driguez and that T&T had breached the Rio Treaty when Ro­driguez was al­lowed to land in the coun­try.

But in a re­sponse to Mon­del­lo’s state­ment last evening, Young said his com­ments in the Up­per House were “mis­con­strued.”

“I nev­er said that the Am­bas­sador did not raise the vis­it of Venezue­lan Vice-Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez nor did I say that the Am­bas­sador did not raise the Rio Treaty,” Young said.

“What I said was the breach of treaty was not raised.

“The Am­bas­sador did speak to me and I did not in­di­cate what we spoke about. I do not be­lieve it was prop­er to pro­vide the de­tails of our dis­cus­sion.”

Young said that the “on­ly thing I said, in re­sponse to a ques­tion raised in Par­lia­ment, was that no breach of the treaty was raised; mean­ing that it was not pos­i­tive­ly put to me that Trinidad and To­ba­go has breached the treaty.”

Young re­it­er­at­ed that the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca re­mains an im­por­tant al­ly and Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to have a good work­ing re­la­tion­ship with mu­tu­al ben­e­fits to our two coun­tries.

He al­so not­ed that an ex­tract of his state­ment on the is­sue was avail­able on Hansard.

The Rio Treaty, oth­er­wise known as the In­ter-Amer­i­can Treaty of Rec­i­p­ro­cal As­sis­tance, is an agree­ment be­tween coun­tries in the West­ern Hemi­sphere as part of a mu­tu­al de­fence sys­tem.

“Ar­ti­cle 20 of the Rio Treaty makes it un­am­bigu­ous­ly clear that all mea­sures im­posed by the Or­gan of Con­sul­ta­tion—like the trav­el re­stric­tions on Ms Ro­driguez—are bind­ing on all treaty par­ties, whether or not they vot­ed in favour of such mea­sures,” Mon­del­lo said in the re­lease.

On May 12, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that the Unit­ed States Em­bassy had said that Gov­ern­ment had vi­o­lat­ed the Rio Treaty by al­low­ing the Ro­driguez vis­it.

Ac­cord­ing to that state­ment from the US Em­bassy, “Del­cy Ro­driguez is sub­ject to trav­el sanc­tions that are bind­ing on all Rio Treaty par­ties, and Trinidad and To­ba­go is a par­ty to the treaty.”

The treaty pro­vides for mu­tu­al as­sis­tance if an act of ag­gres­sion threat­ens the peace of the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

Back in Sep­tem­ber, the sig­na­to­ries met to dis­cuss and vote on whether to em­ploy the re­gion­al treaty to im­pose sanc­tions on Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro.

In that meet­ing, con­vened by the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Amer­i­can States, 16 of the 19 sig­na­to­ries agreed to abide by the Rio Treaty and sup­port­ed us­ing the agree­ment to col­lab­o­rate on law en­force­ment op­er­a­tions and eco­nom­ic sanc­tions against Maduro and his as­so­ciates. T&T ab­stained from vot­ing at that meet­ing but the coun­try is still bound by the agree­ment. Uruguay vot­ed against it and Cu­ba was ab­sent.

Speak­ing to the me­dia af­ter that ab­sten­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Row­ley said that the vote was an at­tempt to put pres­sure on Venezuela by use of mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion.

Last Wednes­day (May 13) in the Sen­ate, in re­sponse to a ques­tion from UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark, Young said he had spo­ken with the Am­bas­sador and that there was no is­sue aris­ing out of the meet­ing with Ro­driguez.

“As I have said, Madam Pres­i­dent, we con­tin­ue to have open chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. In fact, last week the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment’s head and top diplo­mat in Trinidad and To­ba­go, that is, the Am­bas­sador, not any un­der­ling who may or may not be speak­ing to the me­dia, the Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador had a con­ver­sa­tion with me, as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Cab­i­net lev­el of the Gov­ern­ment, and there were oth­er con­ver­sa­tions had and there was no rais­ing of the breach of any treaty.”

Young then ac­cused peo­ple of en­gag­ing in mis­chief when they sug­gest­ed oth­er­wise.

Guardian Me­dia sought a re­sponse from Row­ley about Mon­del­lo’s sur­prise me­dia state­ment.

“Were the de­tails of the meet­ing com­mu­ni­cat­ed to you?” and “if this meet­ing hap­pened on May 6, why did you, on May 10, say that there was no of­fi­cial word that the US was in­ves­ti­gat­ing T&T? Was this con­cern not com­mu­ni­cate to you?”

There was no re­sponse.