Trinidad and Tobago has offered to have its Coast Guard patrol the entire Eastern Caribbean, as far as Antigua, if the United States was prepared to fund it.
Prime Minister Patrick Manning told the Centre for Strategic International Studies here in Washington DC that Government had made the offer to the Americans as part of its efforts to ensure that drug traffickers do not take advantage of the weak Caribbean economies to set up base in the region.Manning said; "We have told them that we are prepared to do our part by patrolling the entire Eastern Caribbean but to fund that would be out of the reach of Trinidad and Tobago and so, if they are prepared to fund it, we are prepared to do it."
The Prime Minister said the fact was that with the decision to construct an Intra-Caribbean Gas Pipeline, Trinidad and Tobago's Coast Guard would have to patrol parts of the Eastern Caribbean to protect the pipeline and already steps were being taken to strengthen the Coast Guard including increases in manpower and in the acquisition of additional patrol boats.
Manning told the Washington policy advisers that Trinidad and Tobago had installed a radar it had bought from Israel and had put in a repeater in the Cedros area and from that the security forces were able to see certain things which had alarmed them.
He said as a result both the Guardia Nacional and the Coast Guard had taken action in that part of the country and had the drug lords on the run.
