Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley on Saturday dismissed as a “dishonest last gasp and gamble of a dangerously delusional woman,” a statement by Opposition Leader Kamla Persad Bissessar calling on him “to come clean and tell this country the true state of this possibly illegitimate fuel shipment” to Venezuela.
In a statement issued on Saturday, Rowley said the “rant” by the opposition leader “is not new” and that as “a desperate and failing opposition leader, it has become abundantly clear that it is the UNC’s (United National Congress) position that for them to succeed, the country must fail”.
On Friday, Persad Bissessar issued a lengthy statement in which she expressed “serious alarm” at a Trinidad Guardian newspaper report that the United States (US) was “probing our country over a Trinidad and Tobago fuel shipment linked to Venezuela.
“If true, our country’s very economic survival is at stake. This since, as our longstanding and greatest global ally, any such rift could gravely damage our very beneficial trade, national security and foreign relations with the United States.”
Persad Bissessar said that since January 2019, the Nicolás Maduro government in Caracas has been “deemed illegal, brutal and corrupt by the US.
“The US and 50 other countries have instead recognised the Venezuelan Opposition Leader Juan Guaidó, as the country’s legitimate president. Further, the US has imposed sweeping sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry, and last month charged Maduro and other senior government officials with “narco-terrorism”.
The Trinidad Guardian newspaper, quoting a Washington official as well as US Embassy officials here, said that they had become aware of reports that a shipment of fuel from the Trinidad-based Paria Fuel Trading Company had been sold to Aruba and eventually sent to Venezuela, in defiance of US sanctions against that country.
It said that the Aruban refinery is linked to Citgo, a subsidiary of the Venezuelan state-owned oil company PDVSA, and reports surfaced last week that the fuel cargo was shipped to Venezuela after it arrived in Aruba.
The paper quoted the US Embassy’s Public Affairs Section as saying that “the US government was aware of reports indicating that a shipment of gasolene from Trinidad and Tobago may have gone to Venezuela”.
The paper said that the embassy noted that if Trinidad and Tobago is found to have assisted Venezuela in getting fuel, it could open the country up to US sanctions.
