Trinidad PM hurt by Dragon Gas link to Maduro support

(Trinidad Guardian) Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has ac­cused the me­dia of in­sult­ing him by in­sin­u­at­ing that the Drag­on Gas deal is some­thing per­son­al be­tween him­self and Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Muduro.

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day as he field­ed ques­tions from the me­dia dur­ing the first day of the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency ho­tel in Port-of-Spain.

“You peo­ple in the me­dia and some ne’er-do-wells in Trinidad and To­ba­go have been mak­ing this ap­pear as if it is some­thing per­son­al be­tween Maduro and me and I think you all are in­sult­ing me as Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go and in­sult­ing your coun­try,” Row­ley said.

“This is not a per­son­al mat­ter. If it (Drag­on gas deal) nev­er works out then it nev­er works out but we tried to open a door. We got to the point where we now have a gas price. So it doesn’t mat­ter who is in Venezuela, that is a use­ful place.”

He added: “What we don’t want is chaos in Venezuela be­cause then we are all in trou­ble be­cause noth­ing could re­al­ly hap­pen. What we are try­ing to avoid is chaos by in­vi­ta­tion.”

The PM said it mat­ters not who is head of the gov­ern­ment of Venezuela, re­it­er­at­ing that the deal is a mat­ter be­tween the “peo­ple of Venezuela and the peo­ple of T&T.” He main­tained that the arrange­ment T&T cur­rent­ly has with Venezuela is not based on a regime but rather on the coun­try’s ex­is­tence.

“We have not tak­en sides. We are neu­tral in this mat­ter. We have no horse in the race but we have a grave con­cern at the out­come of their is­sues,” Row­ley said.

US Am­bas­sador to T&T Joseph Mon­del­lo has, how­ev­er, de­scribed as “deeply con­cern­ing” state­ments com­ing from the T&T Gov­ern­ment recog­nis­ing the “un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and il­le­git­i­mate gov­ern­ment” of Maduro. But Row­ley has fired back at Mon­del­lo, say­ing, “I take um­brage at the Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador in Trinidad and To­ba­go mak­ing a pub­lic state­ment, crit­i­cis­ing the ac­tions of the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go as we take ac­tion in pro­tec­tion of the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Last week the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion im­posed sanc­tions Venezuela.

Asked yes­ter­day whether he was con­cerned there may be neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions for this coun­try since the US is T&T’s largest trad­ing part­ner, Row­ley said, “When­ev­er I hear that kind of con­cern it re­minds me of the woman with a man in her house and a daugh­ter and the daugh­ter com­plains to her about the man’s be­hav­iour and she takes the po­si­tion that if I stand up on prin­ci­ple with this child the man might leave me.

“We in T&T and in Cari­com…We don’t sub­scribe to that.”

He said prin­ci­ples are “not of con­ve­nience,” point­ing out that Cari­com is once again set to take part in mul­ti­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions aimed at find­ing a peace­ful so­lu­tion to po­lit­i­cal ten­sions in Venezuela.

The same del­e­ga­tion, head­ed by Cari­com chair­man and St Kitts and Nevis Prime Min­is­ter Dr Tim­o­thy Har­ris, and in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos PM Mia Mot­t­ley and Row­ley, will head to Uruguay this week to take part in mul­ti­lat­er­al talks with that coun­try and Mex­i­co in the hope of be­ing able to bro­ker peace di­a­logue be­tween Maduro and his chal­lenger, Na­tion­al As­sem­bly leader and self-de­clared in­ter­im pres­i­dent of the coun­try Juan Guai­do.

On whether he was con­cerned re­gard­ing the US’ fu­ture re­la­tion­ship with T&T and Cari­com, Row­ley said as far as he was aware there was no is­sue.

“We have no is­sue about the re­la­tion­ship be­tween us and the US. We have a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion on an ap­proach on a mat­ter which is very im­por­tant to us. We re­serve the right to en­ter­tain, ad­vance and de­fend that point of view with­out com­pro­mis­ing our po­si­tion,” Row­ley added.