00:00In December 2024, then Minister of National Security under the PNM government, Fitzgerald Hines,
00:07signed five military-to-military agreements with the United States,
00:11two of which were said to be able to allow the U.S. to station troops in the country if needs be
00:16and with permission from the government.
00:19The Status of Forces Agreement, which took effect in 2025, was one of them.
00:23The U.S. Embassy said it was to facilitate interoperability between the armed forces of the two countries.
00:31Prime Minister Kamala-Poussad Bisasa, who was leader of the opposition at the time,
00:36was among those, including the Movement for Social Justice, who called on the PNM to reveal what was signed.
00:43The 2025 agreement had at least one known amendment, as cited by MSJ leader David Abdullah.
00:49The Israeli government then signed an agreement or renewed the agreement without any end date.
00:57So it is, there is no ending of this particular SOFA agreement.
01:03Abdullah, as he did at the time, calls it concerning.
01:07He says the PNM administration had stated its position that it would not allow the United States
01:12to use TNT as a base to intervene in any conflict with another country, but this is no longer the case.
01:19Mrs. Persaud Bisasa has explicitly stated that if there is any conflict between Venezuela and Ghana,
01:27she would, Karl Blanche, give approval to U.S. troops to use Trinidad and Tobago
01:33as a jump-off point to intervene.
01:35And therefore, this is very worrying, and we need to know now precisely what are the terms of the SOFA agreement.
01:45And more importantly, we really demand its termination.
01:51The MSJ leader believes that the UNC should uphold the position it took on the publicizing of SOFA when it was in opposition.
02:00Although they're in government, they definitely should make public the terms of the SOFA agreement and the other agreements.
02:06We also want to say that we are totally opposed to any use of Trinidad and Tobago territory for the U.S. to launch any military action against any other state.
02:20Abdullah says it would make TNT a party to any such action over which that country can retaliate.
02:26Abdullah's comments come as U.S. President Donald Trump has placed a 50 million U.S. dollar bounty on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro
02:35and has decided to station military troops in the Caribbean for what the U.S. says is to combat terrorist drug cartels.
02:43However, Prime Minister Posad Bissetta has said that the U.S. government has not requested for their military assets to access TNT's territory for any action against the Venezuelan regime.
02:56Alicia Boucher, TV6 News.
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