Kamla gets one-on-one with Rubio

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­vealed that the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment has re­quest­ed a pri­vate meet­ing be­tween US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio and her to­mor­row in St Kitts and Nevis, ahead of the start of Cari­com’s ple­nary ses­sion in the af­ter­noon pe­ri­od.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed this to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing her ar­rival in St Kitts and Nevis for the 50th Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing and her first since as­sum­ing of­fice in April 2025.

Asked if there are any meet­ings sched­uled with Ru­bio, who an­nounced his at­ten­dance ear­li­er yes­ter­day, the Prime Min­is­ter re­spond­ed, “Yes, the US re­quest­ed a bi­lat­er­al meet­ing with Sec­re­tary Ru­bio and me on Wednes­day, pri­or to the Cari­com ple­nary.”

Dur­ing Cari­com’s bian­nu­al sum­mits, of­fi­cial­ly known as the Meet­ings of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment, the pri­ma­ry large-scale gath­er­ing is the Ple­nary Ses­sion.

While the sum­mit is a mul­ti-day event, the “Ple­nary” deals with the for­mal busi­ness of the meet­ing.

The Prime Min­is­ter added, “So, he will come to the ple­nary, which is Wednes­day af­ter­noon, but he asked for the meet­ing at about 12.15 pm or some­thing on Wednes­day. So, I think that’s an im­por­tant piece of news.”

This will be their sec­ond high-lev­el meet­ing, fol­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s vis­it to Wash­ing­ton on Sep­tem­ber 29. The PM left that meet­ing with the promise of an Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cence to re­sume the Drag­on Gas deal with Venezuela.

Ru­bio had pub­licly hailed her then as a “strong leader” who shares US pri­or­i­ties on se­cu­ri­ty and im­mi­gra­tion.

Asked what is on the agen­da, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “To con­tin­ue col­lab­o­ra­tion and co­op­er­a­tion with re­spect to se­cu­ri­ty is­sues in T&T and, of course, in the re­gion.”

She added, “And oth­er eco­nom­ic in­ter­ests with re­la­tion to Venezuela, which may arise, the OFAC li­cence and so on. We may have some dis­cus­sions about Cu­ba as well.”

The Prime Min­is­ter was then asked if the meet­ing with Ru­bio will re­sult in a stronger US mil­i­tary pres­ence in T&T and the es­tab­lish­ment of a US base in the coun­try.

“No, there’s noth­ing about a base be­ing es­tab­lished. We have had some of their mil­i­tary here for some time. And very im­por­tant to note that our mur­der rate went down by 42 per cent. I find peo­ple don’t have un­der­stand­ing that. That’s over 253 less mur­ders since we’ve part­nered to­geth­er.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has no­tably sup­port­ed US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the South­ern Caribbean to com­bat nar­co-ter­ror­ism and per­mit­ted the de­ploy­ment of US mil­i­tary sen­sors (G/ATOR) at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go.

Mean­while, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was told that there is spec­u­la­tion that her pres­ence in St Kitts and Nevis had more to do with speak­ing with Ru­bio than with the busi­ness of Cari­com.

The Prime Min­is­ter said she was glad Guardian Me­dia raised that is­sue.

“When T&T took the de­ci­sion to at­tend here, there was no meet­ing with Ru­bio in the mak­ing then. That hap­pened there­after. I can send you my text mes­sages. You can take my word, but I have ev­i­dence. This thing about Ru­bio com­ing down here, that in­vi­ta­tion on­ly tran­spired af­ter we had tak­en the de­ci­sion to at­tend Cari­com.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said she made up her mind to at­tend the Cari­com meet­ing as far back as Jan­u­ary 30, when Cari­com chair and St Kitts and Nevis Prime Min­is­ter vis­it­ed her at the Par­lia­ment.

“In fact, there’s a cab­i­net note a cou­ple of weeks ago, sev­er­al weeks ago, where we took that de­ci­sion at the Cab­i­net that I would at­tend,” she said.

Asked what mind­set she was in as she faces Cari­com to­day, fol­low­ing what was se­vere crit­i­cism of the re­gion­al bloc in 2025, the Prime Min­is­ter said, “Cari­com is im­por­tant. We are very in­vest­ed in Cari­com, and it is im­por­tant for us to work. To­geth­er, we can do more. So, it is very im­por­tant for us to have that co­op­er­a­tion and part­ner­ship in this new world, in the new geopol­i­tics, as we move on. That’s how I see it. It’s very im­por­tant for us to con­tin­ue work­ing with each oth­er.”

The Prime Min­is­ter will de­liv­er a keynote ad­dress at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the Cari­com meet­ing this af­ter­noon. The meet­ing runs un­til Feb­ru­ary 27.