Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Three Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment min­is­ters yes­ter­day crit­i­cised the T&T Gov­ern­ment for its sup­port of the Unit­ed States’ mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Caribbean, warn­ing this coun­try not to al­low it­self to be used in any threat to the re­gion’s peace.

As ten­sions con­tin­ue to rise be­tween T&T and Venezuela as a re­sult of the US Navy’s pres­ence in T&T, Venezuela’s Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Yván Gil, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo and De­fence Min­is­ter Vladimir Padri­no López all warned T&T not to be pulled in­to the con­flict by the US.

Fol­low­ing the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment’s claim on Sun­day con­demn­ing T&T for al­leged­ly align­ing with the Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Agency (CIA) to desta­bilise Venezuela, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Gil yes­ter­day urged T&T not to be dragged in­to what he called “a dirty war.”

“Venezuela has clear­ly in­formed the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go about the CIA-led false flag op­er­a­tion: at­tack­ing an Amer­i­can mil­i­tary ship parked on that is­land and then blam­ing Venezuela, to jus­ti­fy an ag­gres­sion against our coun­try. It’s the same im­pe­r­i­al script of the ship Maine and the Gulf of Tonkin: fab­ri­cate a con­flict to im­pose in­ter­ests out­side our re­gion,” Gil said in a state­ment on In­sta­gram, in re­la­tion to the ar­rival of the USS Grave­ly in Port-of-Spain on Sun­day.

In a tone more mod­er­ate than Sun­day’s state­ment, Gil said Venezuela is hope­ful T&T will do the right thing.

“In our ter­ri­to­ry, a crim­i­nal cell fund­ed by the CIA linked to this covert op­er­a­tion is be­ing dis­man­tled. We hope that Trinidad and To­ba­go will do the right thing and not al­low their ter­ri­to­ry to be used for ma­noeu­vres that threat­en Caribbean peace.”

He added, “We re­spect the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and trust their con­science to pre­vent their coun­try from be­ing dragged in­to a dirty war op­er­a­tion.”

How­ev­er, he said Venezuela will not be pro­voked.

“Venezuela will not fall in­to provo­ca­tions, but no one is con­fused: we will de­fend our sov­er­eign­ty with­out hes­i­ta­tion. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Caribbean and for his­to­ry: ei­ther sides with peace or sink in­to the CIA agen­da.”

In a video on Face­book, Padri­no López said, “Don’t make a mis­take about Venezuela. We have learned of a ma­jor ex­er­cise that will be held here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, just a few miles from our na­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry.”

He claimed T&T is of­fer­ing it­self to the US as a mil­i­tary base.

“It is ab­ject­ly lend­ing its ter­ri­to­ry, against the will of the peo­ple of Trinidad, as a for­eign mil­i­tary base, threat­en­ing the peace of the re­gion, the peace of the Caribbean, the peace of the en­tire Latin Amer­i­can re­gion, and flout­ing that call, which we made from the top of our lungs back in 2014 when we de­clared our­selves a Zone of Peace,” he stat­ed.

Mean­while, Ca­bel­lo ac­cused the US and T&T gov­ern­ments of car­ry­ing out mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es very close to Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry, an act he de­scribed as one of “provo­ca­tion.”

“Trinidad and To­ba­go has a lot of ter­ri­to­ry and they de­cid­ed to do the ex­er­cis­es against Venezuela, it’s a clear provo­ca­tion,” Ca­bel­lo as­sert­ed dur­ing a press con­fer­ence of Venezuela’s rul­ing So­cial­ist Par­ty (PSUV).

Not­ing that T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had called for the mur­der of her fel­low cit­i­zens while they were out fish­ing and ap­plaud­ed the killing of peo­ple on the high seas, Ca­bel­lo added, “Our peo­ple are mo­bilised, at peace and are send­ing a mes­sage to the peo­ple of Trinidad that they will con­tin­ue to be sis­ter peo­ples.”

He re­called that the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, through a state­ment pub­lished on Sun­day, re­port­ed the cap­ture of a group of mer­ce­nar­ies with di­rect in­for­ma­tion from the Unit­ed States In­tel­li­gence Agency (CIA).

“They want­ed to car­ry out a false flag op­er­a­tion against one of the ves­sels in­volved in the al­leged ex­er­cis­es to blame Venezuela and gen­er­ate a con­fronta­tion,” he said.

He em­pha­sised that the Amer­i­cans are look­ing for any ex­cuse be­cause no one be­lieved their sto­ries about nar­co-traf­fick­ing em­a­nat­ing from Venezuela.

“No one in the world be­lieves that sto­ry, un­less they are held ac­count­able to the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment,” he said.

Ref­er­enc­ing his coun­try’s se­ri­ous ap­proach to deal­ing with the drug trade, Ca­bel­lo an­nounced that more than 100 ki­los of drugs were seized in the Venezue­lan state of Guári­co yes­ter­day.

“Wher­ev­er they go, we’re go­ing to catch them, and we’re catch­ing them every day. Our po­lice force is on top of that work. They for­get that 87 per cent of the drugs con­sumed in the Unit­ed States come out through the Pa­cif­ic,” Ca­bel­lo re­it­er­at­ed.