Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les has reaf­firmed calls for T&T's Gov­ern­ment to re­main neu­tral af­ter the Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro has of­fi­cial­ly been de­clared a mem­ber of a For­eign Ter­ror­ist Or­gan­i­sa­tion (FTO).

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said he does not see how the lat­est des­ig­na­tion of Maduro will add to on­go­ing US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions, as the US gov­ern­ment has de­scribed Maduro as a nar­co-ter­ror­ist for some time.

"The Unit­ed States has been say­ing this for a while now that he is the head of this car­tel, so I'm not sure that this is new, and this is how they have been ap­proach­ing Venezuela.

"I'm not sure the or­gan­i­sa­tion they're re­fer­ring to is in­volved in any drugs be­cause that or­gan­i­sa­tion has been there for a long time, even be­fore Maduro."

He con­tin­ued to urge T&T's gov­ern­ment to be mind­ful of tak­ing any side if a con­flict be­tween the US and Venezuela were to erupt.

"I see now we are kind of shift­ing and mak­ing it clear that we won't be used as a launch­ing pad against Venezuela, which is good. I think that has to be made clear up front so that the Venezue­lans don't get the im­pres­sion that we are al­low­ing our coun­try to be used as a stag­ing area against them.

"We have to be very care­ful of what we're say­ing, and the more we stay out of this, the bet­ter be­cause we're talk­ing about big pow­er in­volve­ment, and we haven't talked about the Rus­sians and Chi­nese, who are very in­volved with the Venezue­lans."

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Venezue­lan am­bas­sador to T&T Al­varo Sanchez Cordero via What­sApp for com­ment on the US State De­part­ment's des­ig­na­tion of Maduro. He ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt of the ques­tions and said he would "seek clear­ance and re­vert."

No re­sponse was pro­vid­ed up to news time.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers for com­ment on whether Madro's des­ig­na­tion as a mem­ber an FTO would af­fect this coun­try's diplo­mat­ic ties with Venezuela, but was told that he was on busi­ness in the mid­dle east and would re­spond to ques­tions on his re­turn.

Ques­tions were al­so sent to act­ing Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Bar­ry Padarath, but re­ceived no re­sponse.