Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Venezuela’s Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Al­varo Sanchez Cordero, is hop­ing the Unit­ed States’ de­ploy­ment of naval ves­sels near Venezuela is noth­ing more than a show of force against his coun­try that will “die away” in a few days.

At a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day evening at the Venezue­lan Em­bassy in T&T, which sought to ad­dress the on­go­ing ten­sions be­tween the US and Venezuela, Am­bas­sador Cordero said, “I want to be hope­ful in the sense that this may be just an­oth­er show­ing of force against Venezuela, but hope­ful­ly it’s noth­ing more than that.”

He added, “I want to be hope­ful, of course, that in­deed it’s go­ing to be like that, that this will die away in a few days, just like all these oth­er at­tempts that we have gone through.”

The US is in­creas­ing its mil­i­tary pres­ence in the south­ern Caribbean. The US first de­ployed three naval ves­sels, the USS San An­to­nio, USS Iwo Ji­ma, and USS Fort Laud­erdale, to the Caribbean, fol­lowed by re­ports that two more, the USS Lake Erie and USS New­port News, would ar­rive in the re­gion by ear­ly next week.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­clared full sup­port for the US naval de­ploy­ment in the Caribbean.

Am­bas­sador Cordero de­clined to an­swer any ques­tions put to him on Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s po­si­tion in this mat­ter, say­ing he did not have the clear­ance to do so.

Cordero al­so re­fused to an­swer if he had any re­cent com­mu­ni­ca­tion with this coun­try’s gov­ern­ment. He would on­ly say that he was hap­py with the diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries.

“If you ask me how hap­py I am in this beau­ti­ful coun­try, I’m the hap­pi­est per­son in Trinidad and To­ba­go, along with my fam­i­ly. And that’s the at­ti­tude that we main­tain. No mat­ter how dif­fi­cult cer­tain sit­u­a­tions may be, we are hap­py and con­fi­dent that both coun­tries are rich in terms of our fam­i­ly ties, our cul­ture, our his­to­ry,” he said.

How­ev­er, the Am­bas­sador said the nar­ra­tive cre­at­ed by the US, which is call­ing the de­ploy­ment a war on drugs en­ter­ing its coun­try, is a “false flag” as he claimed the re­al in­ten­tion is to oust Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro.

He posit­ed that through the me­dia, the US cre­ates the il­lu­sion that the Venezue­lan peo­ple are suf­fer­ing, and the coun­try is a ma­jor play­er in the drug trade.

With the aid of a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion, Cordero pre­sent­ed sta­tis­tics that ap­peared to sug­gest oth­er­wise.

Ref­er­enc­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions’ 2025 World Drug Re­port, Cordero said the re­port said Venezuela is free of drug cul­ti­va­tion, drug lab pro­cess­ing, and is not a ma­jor traf­fick­ing route, nei­ther through air, land, or sea.

Turn­ing to a US De­part­ment of Jus­tice 2025 Drug En­force­ment Agency (DEA) re­port, the Am­bas­sador said, the so-called Car­tel de los Oles is not even men­tioned.

The Cár­tel de los Soles (Car­tel of the Suns) is a sup­posed crim­i­nal and ter­ror­ist or­ga­ni­za­tion that, ac­cord­ing to ac­cu­sa­tions by the Unit­ed States and oth­er coun­tries, is led by high-rank­ing of­fi­cials of the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment and armed forces.

Cordero said the peo­ple of Venezuela are hap­py with their gov­ern­ment, and their econ­o­my is flour­ish­ing.