New Caricom chair signals openness to talks with T&T PM

Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

As he be­gins his tenure as Cari­com chair through to June 30, St Kitts and Nevis Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ter­rance Drew has ac­knowl­edged that he as­sumes the role at a mo­ment of acute pres­sure, shaped by geopo­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty and grow­ing ques­tions about the bloc’s uni­ty and rel­e­vance.

Drew said “uni­ty” sits at the fore­front of his agen­da, not­ing that he has al­ready held face-to-face dis­cus­sions with the prime min­is­ters of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da to gath­er can­did feed­back on Cari­com’s di­rec­tion. He al­so con­firmed that he for­mal­ly ex­pressed his will­ing­ness to meet with Trinidad and To­ba­go Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, though he did not say whether she has re­spond­ed.

“What I’m do­ing here is a strat­e­gy of talk­ing as much as pos­si­ble, face-to-face, eye­ball-to-eye­ball with our lead­ers, ask­ing the dif­fi­cult ques­tions so that, in a sense, every­thing can be put on the ta­ble and the best po­si­tion reached,” Drew said.

“So, yes, I would love to come and have a con­ver­sa­tion with her over some dou­bles.”

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Drew said he hopes all re­gion­al lead­ers, in­clud­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar, will at­tend Cari­com’s 50th reg­u­lar meet­ing from Feb­ru­ary 24 to 27 in Bas­seterre, St Kitts. He said any par­tic­i­pa­tion by the Trinidad and To­ba­go prime min­is­ter would be met with full deco­rum, em­pha­sis­ing that dis­cus­sions held in cau­cus are strict­ly con­fi­den­tial. Per­sad-Bisses­sar has not phys­i­cal­ly at­tend­ed a Cari­com meet­ing since her elec­tion vic­to­ry on April 28 last year.

On Wash­ing­ton’s re­cent ban on im­mi­grant visas af­fect­ing 12 Caribbean coun­tries — 11 of them Cari­com mem­bers — Drew said the bloc hopes to pre­serve sta­ble re­la­tions with the Unit­ed States, par­tic­u­lar­ly on im­mi­gra­tion. Trinidad and To­ba­go was not in­clud­ed on the list, but Drew said the is­sue is ex­pect­ed to be raised at up­com­ing meet­ings.

“We have mem­bers who were not put on the list, and we are hop­ing that all mem­bers will be off that list so that, in a sense, the re­gion can con­tin­ue its very good re­la­tions with the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, es­pe­cial­ly in the spe­cif­ic area of im­mi­gra­tion,” he said.

Drew al­so ac­knowl­edged that sev­er­al Cari­com coun­tries, in­clud­ing St Kitts and Nevis, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Do­mini­ca, Saint Lu­cia, Grena­da and Guyana, have been asked to ac­cept third-coun­try de­por­tees from the Unit­ed States. While ac­knowl­edg­ing each state’s sov­er­eign­ty, he said co­or­di­nat­ed re­gion­al re­spons­es re­main prefer­able.

“We con­tin­ue to seek, as far as pos­si­ble, to be unit­ed in our re­spons­es to geopo­lit­i­cal mat­ters,” he said.

Turn­ing to Haiti, Drew ac­knowl­edged the scale and com­plex­i­ty of the cri­sis con­fronting the re­gion’s most frag­ile state, par­tic­u­lar­ly the lim­its of Cari­com’s ca­pac­i­ty to in­ter­vene mil­i­tar­i­ly.

“There are coun­tries with no mil­i­tary at all with­in Cari­com. And those that have mil­i­tary, the mil­i­tary is ex­treme­ly small, right? And so, it is very chal­leng­ing,” he said.

“But the bloc will con­tin­ue to work. It is not easy work. It is dif­fi­cult work. We are not pre­scrib­ing to Haiti what Haiti should do. We want to help to fa­cil­i­tate, be­cause this has to be Haiti. Haiti has to lead this. Haiti has to de­cide what is best for it. We are here to sup­port and to fa­cil­i­tate as far as pos­si­ble.”