US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said yesterday that an international coalition has been formed against drug cartels and that Trinidad and Tobago is among the countries lending support.
In an immediate response, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar told the Express she will accept any help to make the country safe again.
She said, We will work with anyone to fight the scourge of drug, arms and human trafficking. We have had over 10,000 murders in the last 25 years. The country has been drowning in blood. I will accept any help that is available to make our country safe again.
Rubio made the statement yesterday at US President Donald Trumps three-and-a-half-hour-long cabinet meeting at the White House, which was broadcast live.
Noting that Trumps foreign policy is designed to make America stronger and more prosperous, Rubio said:
For the first time in the modern era, we are truly on offence against organised cartels that are pumping poison, killer poison, into our cities and thats a team effort. He added that the US is getting incredible international co-operation.
Said Rubio: Countries, just in the last week, Ecuador, Paraguay, Guyana, Trinidad, today, Argentina, all joining us or trying to be helpful in advancing us.
One thing is there, we are going to stop drugs from coming in and were having record seizures, but another thing is to build an international coalition against the scourge on the international stage, he added.
Rubio said the US is not only tackling the drug cartels but also dealing with illegal mass migration, which he said is dangerous for America and harmful to American workers.
He said there are countries all over the world helping the US through agreementswhether it is to stop the migration flow from coming in the first place.
He said Americans are fortunate to have a president who has made peace a prio�rity, as he boasted of Trumps intervention in stopping conflict between nations such as Cambodia and Thailand, etc.
Reached for comment yesterday, Minister of Foreign and Caricom Affairs Sean Sobers told the Express: The Government of Trinidad and Tobago will partner with anyone who is committed to helping us confront the scourge of drug trafficking, the illegal arms trade, and human exploitation, which have ravaged communities across our beautiful nation for far too long.
In the past 25 years, thousands of lives have been lost to violence. Our streets have been soaked in blood. This ends now. We refuse to bow or surrender to those who prefer that our borders and waters remain unmanned.
We must reclaim our streets, restore peace in our communities, and secure a safer future for all, and under this Government, we will.
The Express also contac�ted Ambassador to Caricom Ralph Maraj for comment, and he responded via WhatsApp, A welcome development. Validates our Prime Ministers position of co-operation with the United States against the destabilising menace in our region. The rest of Caricom must understand new realities.
Meanwhile, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Terry Cole, in an interview with Fox News, spoke about the warships deployed to deal with the drug cartels, saying Venezuela has turned into a narco-terrorist state that continues to work with the Colombian drug cartels to send record amounts of cocaine from Venezuela and Colombia into the Mexican cartels.
He said the DEA has seized more cocaine this year than in past years.
He said the amount of methamphetamine entering the US continues to be on the uptick, and they are still seeing record amounts of fentanyl entering the country.
The Venezuelan dictatorship, he is a narco-terrorist, they continue to send their poison into the United States, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, not to mention the TDA members (Tren de Arangua gang) that they send to our country to destroy the beautiful streets of the United States, he said.
