The Gov­ern­ment has not dis­closed the spe­cif­ic out­comes of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s meet­ing with of­fi­cials from the Unit­ed States South­ern Com­mand ear­li­er this week.

How­ev­er, the De­fence Min­is­ter, in prais­ing the Prime Min­is­ter for her ef­forts to boost this coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus, blamed the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment’s close ties to Venezuela for the degra­da­tion of the coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty ca­pac­i­ty.

Guardian Me­dia was pre­vi­ous­ly told that the re­cent dis­cus­sions had ac­ti­vat­ed the sec­ond phase of the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s crime sup­pres­sion strat­e­gy, shift­ing fo­cus to tack­ling crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty on the ground. The Prime Min­is­ter stat­ed that sev­er­al projects had been iden­ti­fied for im­ple­men­ta­tion, but no fur­ther de­tails were pro­vid­ed.