Parliamentarians hail PM-Rubio meeting

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Some par­lia­men­tar­i­ans be­lieve Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pri­vate meet­ing to­day with Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio is a pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment for this coun­try.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who is in St Kitts and Nevis for the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com, re­vealed to Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day that the US has re­quest­ed a bi­lat­er­al meet­ing be­tween her and Ru­bio at around mid­day.

The en­gage­ment is ex­pect­ed to take place ahead of, and sep­a­rate from, the Cari­com ple­nary ses­sion in­volv­ing re­gion­al heads lat­er to­day.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side of the Red House in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne, who was a strong pro­po­nent of the Prime Min­is­ter at­tend­ing the Cari­com meet­ing, said he has no is­sue with that par­tic­u­lar agen­da item.

“She’s our head of gov­ern­ment and be­ing the Sec­re­tary of State, be­ing a spe­cial guest at this meet­ing, it’s quite an or­der for such a meet­ing to take place.”

How­ev­er, he added, “It’s what is dis­cussed and what po­si­tions are be­ing car­ried and how does that af­fect the sov­er­eign­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go com­ing out of these in­ter­ac­tions. So that’s a con­cern. The meet­ing it­self is quite an or­der and I would say ap­pro­pri­ate in the cir­cum­stances.”

On Mon­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar sought to as­sure Guardian Me­dia that the set­ting up of a US mil­i­tary base in T&T is not on the agen­da.

Browne, mean­while, said he was hap­py the PM de­cid­ed to go to the Cari­com meet­ing af­ter skip­ping the pre­vi­ous one in Ja­maica last year.

“I’m very pleased and the par­ty is pleased, be­cause that’s where she should be. The lead­er­ship of Trinidad and To­ba­go is very im­por­tant among the var­i­ous lead­ers of the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty.”

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Mar­lene Attzs said she too was heart­ened that this coun­try will have a one-on-one au­di­ence with Ru­bio.

Attzs said, “I think it’s an im­por­tant meet­ing for us as a re­gion and an im­por­tant meet­ing in terms of the cur­rent geopo­lit­i­cal cli­mate. So, I think it is an ex­treme­ly im­por­tant meet­ing, and I look for­ward to the out­come and the prime min­is­ter’s re­port to the coun­try in terms of what tran­spired so we can move for­ward.”

Com­ment­ing briefly on this de­vel­op­ment, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said, “I hope that we will con­tin­ue to have great re­la­tions with the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and our oth­er trad­ing part­ners.”

This will be the sec­ond meet­ing be­tween Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Ru­bio. The first one took place in Wash­ing­ton on Sep­tem­ber 29, 2025, fol­low­ing which an Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cence was se­cured for this coun­try to do busi­ness with Venezuela re­lat­ing to the Drag­on Gas deal.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­so been the US’s strongest sup­port­er in the Caribbean re­gion for what the US called its drug in­ter­dic­tion ef­forts in the re­gion. The Prime Min­is­ter al­lowed the US to in­stall a mil­i­tary radar in To­ba­go and grant­ed ap­proval for US mil­i­tary flights in­to and out of the coun­try.