Rubio confirmed for CARICOM heads meeting in St Kitts

Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State, Mar­co Ru­bio, has been con­firmed as an at­tendee at the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of CARI­COM in St Kitts to­mor­row, fol­low­ing days of spec­u­la­tion about his pos­si­ble vis­it.

Con­fir­ma­tion came to­day from the U.S. State De­part­ment in a press state­ment at­trib­uted to Prin­ci­pal Deputy Spokesper­son Tom­my Pig­ott.

In the state­ment, the de­part­ment said:

“Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio will trav­el to Saint Kitts and Nevis on Feb­ru­ary 25 to par­tic­i­pate in the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of CARI­COM.”

It added that Ru­bio:

“…will en­gage with Caribbean lead­ers to ad­vance shared pri­or­i­ties, in­clud­ing strength­en­ing re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, deep­en­ing co­op­er­a­tion to com­bat il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion and il­lic­it traf­fick­ing, and pro­mot­ing eco­nom­ic growth, health, and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty across the Caribbean.”

The U.S. State De­part­ment al­so not­ed that dur­ing his vis­it, Sec­re­tary Ru­bio will “reaf­firm the Unit­ed States’ com­mit­ment to work­ing with CARI­COM mem­ber states to en­hance sta­bil­i­ty and pros­per­i­ty in our hemi­sphere.”

An ear­ly draft of the list of speak­ers for the meet­ing does not list Sec­re­tary Ru­bio as sched­uled to de­liv­er an ad­dress to the del­e­ga­tion. How­ev­er, mul­ti­ple closed-door meet­ings are ex­pect­ed to take place on the mar­gins of the con­fer­ence, and he is ex­pect­ed to par­tic­i­pate in those en­gage­ments.

The 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty, al­so known as CARI­COM, brings to­geth­er re­gion­al lead­ers to ad­dress key po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and se­cu­ri­ty is­sues af­fect­ing Mem­ber States.