The report, first carried in the 'Sunday Guardian' ,fails to identify specific names of those involved in the drug trafficking ring.

Earlier, the paper had quoted from the same report as claiming that the stage was being set for a leading drug trafficker businessman to become Prime Minister of the country within the next five years.

But National Security Minister Howard Chin Lee was quick to dismiss the veracity of the report. He was also contemptuous in his comments of the report being leaked to just that newspaper and not made available other sections of the media or his government, as far as he was made aware.

However, Venezuela's ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, Hector Cassy Azocar, was yesterday quoted as saying that his embassy and government were "carefully" considering the claims in the report from the French-based international research organisation that focuses on the geopolitics of the narcotics trade.

Officials of the United States and French diplomatic missions in Port-of-Spain have also expressed their concerns about the implications of claims in the research organisation's report, according to yesterday's "Sunday Guardian". In particular of businessmen operating "front businesses" while in fact engaging in the lucrative illegal drug trade.

Prime Minister Patrick Manning, in response to a question, said while he also has no evidence to support the claims contained in the report, he would not be "surprised" by what he has been told. He promised that ongoing investigations were taking place to "unveil the links between politicians and the drug trade".

The report outlined in some details how businessmen were laundering money through covert operations , such as the used car trade: small retail stores and investments in services industry; rental of apartments and houses in wealthy neighbourhoods near Port-of-Spain, and feed the retail crack and cocaine trade that is being run primarily by Afro-Trinidadians.

A significant omission of the report is the naming of either the specific French-based research group or the title of the report.

But it claims to have some 60 worldwide "correspondents" in addition to some 100 journalists and researchers who specialise in the drug trade .The organisation is said to be "partly funded" by the European Foundation which is an advisory body to the United Nations anti-drugs policies.