Trinidad and Tobago will allow the US military to use its airports in the coming weeks, according to a statement from the Caribbean island nation’s Foreign Ministry, as the US continues ramping up military activity near Venezuela.
Trinidad and Tobago’s Foreign Ministry cited recent military cooperation with the US in its statement, including the recent installation of a radar system in the country.
“In keeping with established bilateral cooperation, the Ministry has granted approvals for United States military aircraft to transit Trinidad and Tobago’s airports in the coming weeks. The United States has advised that these movements are logistical in nature, facilitating supply replenishment and routine personnel rotations,” the ministry said.
US cooperation with Trinidad and Tobago has also involved intensified US military drills in the country, which lies just seven miles off the coast of Venezuela. Trinidadian Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has strongly supported the US bombing campaign against alleged drug boats in the region, which has killed citizens of her country and has caused bodies to wash up on Trinidad’s coast.
Amery Brown, an opposition senator and former foreign minister, strongly criticized the announcement about the US military using Trinidad and Tobago’s airports, saying the country has become “complicit facilitators of extrajudicial killings, cross-border tension and belligerence.”
“There is nothing routine about this. It has nothing to do with the usual cooperation and friendly collaborations that we have enjoyed with the USA and all of our neighbors for decades,” Brown added, according to The Associated Press.
The announcement came after a US military aircraft nearly collided with a JetBlue plane that took off from the nearby Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao and was bound for New York. “We almost had a midair collision up here,” the pilot told air traffic control after the near miss, which occurred on Friday. “They passed directly in our flight path. … They don’t have their transponder turned on, it’s outrageous.”
