PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (AP) — The government of Trinidad and Tobago said Monday it will allow U.S. troops to access its airports in the coming weeks as tensions rise between the United States and Venezuela.
The news follows the recent installation of a radar system at Tobago Airport by the US military. The Caribbean nation’s government says the radar is being used to combat local crime and that the small country will not be used as a launching pad for attacks on any other country.
Trinidad and Tobago’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that the United States would use the airports for “activities of a logistical nature to facilitate supplies and routine personnel rotations.” It did not provide further details.
Trinidad’s prime minister has previously praised the United States’ ongoing crackdown on suspected drug trafficking ships in the Caribbean.
Venezuela is just seven miles (11 kilometers) away from its closest point to the Caribbean twin-island nation. It has two main airports: Piarco International Airport in Trinidad and ANR Robinson International Airport in Tobago.
Opposition senator Emery Brown, the country’s former foreign minister, accused the government of being deceptive in its statement.
Brown said Trinidad and Tobago had become “a complicit driver of extrajudicial killings, cross-border tensions and belligerence”.
“This is not a routine matter. This has nothing to do with the consistent cooperation and goodwill that we have enjoyed with the United States and all our neighbors for decades,” he said.
He said that the United States’ “blanket license” allowed the country to “take another step on the road to becoming a satellite state” and pursue the philosophy of “might makes right.”
As Washington built a fleet of warships near Venezuela, including its largest aircraft carrier, the United States began launching air strikes in September that have killed more than 80 people.
In October, a U.S. warship docked in Trinidad’s capital, Port of Spain, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration stepped up military pressure on Venezuela and President Nicolas Maduro.
U.S. lawmakers have questioned the legality of attacks on ships in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific and recently announced that Congress would review the attacks.
