Chavez’s unlikely ally:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez may have found an unlikely ally right next door to him in the person of Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister Patrick Manning who last week slammed Washington for ignoring him, ignoring Trinidad and Tobago and ignoring the entire Caribbean.

The Bolivarian Revolution-hugging Chavez, the world’s most brutal critic of George W. and his administration, may have looked at Manning in the past as a docile Caribbean leader, who wouldn’t dream of bad-mouthing or criticising Washington.

Who knows, maybe Chavez has already telephoned his next door neighbour, after last week’s tempo in Port of Spain asking,

“Comrade Manning, qué tal?”

And so it was, that the entire who’s who in the energy industry and in the diplomatic circles turned out to hear Manning at the launch of  BG’s inaugural energy luncheon series when the prime minister waded into the US, and transformed what otherwise would have been the usual polite platitudes into a jaw-dropping, heart-thumping event.

Totally ignoring the watchful stare of US Ambassador Roy Austin sitting near him, Manning opined that the US – was “studiously” ignoring the Caribbean and that it no longer had an interest in going after the South American drug dealers who use the Caribbean islands to transship drugs to the consuming nations of the UK, Europe and the US – and was of course focused on eliminating the Islam-worshipping terrorists who wanted to harm Americans, coke-heads and all.

Manning’s gripe is that the US has basically ignored him on calls to help finance assets that would allow Trinidad and Tobago to patrol the eastern Caribbean and take on the drug dealers head-on, since the US has apparently abdicated their presence in helping to secure the Caribbean waters.

As Trinidad and Tobago plays a significant role in the energy security of the US, Manning felt that Bush would recognise this and in turn help in the security of the Caribbean. Maybe elephants do fly!

The Trinidadian leader has also been calling on the US in the past to allow goods, manufactured in other Caribbean countries but packaged in Trinidad to be allowed duty-free access to the US market – again, hoping that the US, grateful to TT for their natural gas, would want to help Trinidad and the precarious economic situation in some of our sister CARICOM countries.

He’s also raised the fact that CBI, which provides 24 beneficiary countries with duty-free access to the U.S. market for certain goods, will expire soon without any discussions taking place on a suitable replacement.

Washington might have ignored Manning’s latest comments, might have even dismissed the criticisms as ramblings from another third world, banana-republic leader – except that the issue of energy security is of paramount importance to the US and that the US imports about 73 percent of its LNG supplies from the Trinidadians.

And so Manning dropped his bombshell, literally at the feet of the Vincentian US Ambassador Austin when he said that Trinidad and Tobago may have to seriously consider looking at other markets such as Brazil and Mexico to send their LNG as they did not want to have all their eggs in one basket.

It immediately reminded me of the threats by Chavez to withhold oil exports to the US.

Having heard the latest salvo from the region – no doubt Austin who got his ambassadorial job only because he was a college buddy of Bush – would have immediately dispatched Manning’s threats to Washington, maybe under a red alert.

And maybe Washington may continue to ignore Manning and ignore the Caribbean and the Western Hemisphere and the so-called third-border initiative, which was aimed at strengthening the ability of Caribbean institutions to address social and economic problems, combat transnational crime and enhance regional security.

They might continue to ignore him but at least Manning has waved a red flag in their face and has gotten their attention.

Two days after criticising Washington, the US assistant secretary for Energy, Karen Harbert was making the usual noises that her presence in Trinidad at an energy competitiveness conference indicated the US interest in the Caribbean.

No one bought it. In fact, it raised the ire of some of the Caribbean energy ministers who in the presence of Ms. Harbert, agreed that the US was ignoring the plight of the Caribbean.

Jamaica’s foreign minister Anthony Hylton in a direct response to the US assistant secretary said the Caribbean was not interested in window-dressing, throwing his support behind Comrade Manning.

Fact is, and it has been said often-times, that the Caribbean and Latin American region does not and has never favoured high up with the Bush administration, even before the 9/11 terrorist events.

However, one of their pre-occupations has been the close friendship the Caribbean has with Cuba and once in a while, US Ambassadors would meet with foreign ministers to express Washington’s concern about their trade relations with the Communist state, attempting to wield the big stick over them.

Then, we saw the US making some half-hearted attempts to show interest in the Caribbean and Latin America when they realised that a bunch of socialist leaders were emerging right on their back door, while their eyes were focused down in the Middle-East.

Meanwhile, Washington’s ‘bad boys’ Chavez and Castro were upping the criticism against the Bush regime.

In the eyes of Washington, Chavez began emerging as a dangerous force, as he was successfully wooing hemispheric leaders with the promise of oil on very favourable terms including exchanging it for cows as in the case of Uraguay and Argentina and even with rice, bananas or sugar.

I don’t expect the US to do anything about Manning’s concerns except to keep a closer eye down in Port of Spain to see what he is up to.

And with Trinidad about to sign an energy cooperation memorandum with Mexico to sell natural gas to them, I await Part 11 of the drama and suspense series in Port of Spain.