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JENSEN LA VENDE

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she re­mains in sup­port of US strikes on al­leged Venezue­lan drug traf­fick­ers, even as she seeks to fos­ter a bet­ter re­la­tion­ship with that coun­try’s leader, Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro. On Tues­day, Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio as­sured the Prime Min­is­ter that the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion sup­ports Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Drag­on gas project. Af­ter bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions on en­er­gy and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, high on the agen­da in Wash­ing­ton, DC, Sec­re­tary Ru­bio ac­knowl­edged the sig­nif­i­cance of the Drag­on gas plan to T&T’s eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty and re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty.

He said the US sup­port in­clud­ed steps to safe­guard the project’s im­ple­men­ta­tion and en­sure that it all aligns with an Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cence, while lim­it­ing the ben­e­fits to the Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion.