When asked to comment on the contents of the publication Minister of National Security Howard Chin Lee said he had no knowledge of the report nor the organisation that produced it.

Told briefly about the contents, he said "from the sound" of it, it was libellous.

Although the Sunday Guardian offered several times to show him the report so he could make a more studied comment, he said: "I don't want to deal with that story. It sounds like propaganda."

Chin Lee, who has been a Minister for almost five months, instead questioned why only the Sunday Guardian had a copy of the report, stating "no other media house knows about it; I was not approached by no other reporter about this."

In May 5 news reports, Chin Lee is quoted as saying Venezuela has clearly been identified as the primary staging and transshipment area for drugs into the eastern Caribbean and Trinidad.

He identified a simultaneous escalation of arms trafficking and called for co-operation between the armed forces of Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela.