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For­mer For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne has raised con­cerns about the use of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s air­ports by Unit­ed States mil­i­tary air­craft, say­ing the fa­cil­i­ties are in­tend­ed for civil­ian op­er­a­tions.

In a state­ment on his Face­book page, Dr Browne said the coun­try’s air­ports were “de­signed and staffed and se­cured for civil­ian use, not for use as air bases for mil­i­tary air­craft of var­i­ous types for an un­spec­i­fied du­ra­tion.” He said such air­craft car­ry mu­ni­tions and ex­plo­sives that would not be dis­closed to the pub­lic.

It comes a day af­ter the Gov­ern­ment ap­proved the use of lo­cal air­ports by Unit­ed States mil­i­tary air­craft to con­duct what it de­scribes as “lo­gis­ti­cal ac­tiv­i­ties,” a de­ci­sion that has sparked strong crit­i­cism from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), which claims it ce­ments the coun­try’s sta­tus as a “satel­lite state” of the US.