Trinidad and Tobago abstains from CARICOM Cuba statement

Trinidad and To­ba­go ab­stained from a Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) for­eign af­fairs state­ment con­demn­ing on­go­ing mea­sures against Cu­ba and warn­ing against any mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion to­ward the is­land.

In a state­ment is­sued by the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil for For­eign and Com­mu­ni­ty Re­la­tions (COF­COR), the re­gion­al body ex­pressed con­cern over what it de­scribed as in­ten­si­fy­ing eco­nom­ic, com­mer­cial and fi­nan­cial mea­sures im­posed on Cu­ba, say­ing they had com­pound­ed the ef­fects of the long-stand­ing em­bar­go and con­tributed to wors­en­ing hard­ship for the Cuban peo­ple.

COF­COR al­so warned that the mount­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in Cu­ba were af­fect­ing CARI­COM na­tion­als study­ing and liv­ing there.

The coun­cil reaf­firmed what it de­scribed as Cu­ba's sov­er­eign right to im­port and re­ceive fu­el and con­demned ac­tions ob­struct­ing en­er­gy sup­plies to the coun­try, say­ing such mea­sures had led to a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis.

The state­ment al­so ex­pressed alarm over re­cent com­ments sug­gest­ing pos­si­ble mil­i­tary ac­tion against Cu­ba, warn­ing that such ac­tion could desta­bilise the wider Caribbean re­gion and threat­en the re­gion's sta­tus as a Zone of Peace.

COF­COR fur­ther said the con­tin­ued use of uni­lat­er­al co­er­cive mea­sures against Cu­ba rep­re­sent­ed a vi­o­la­tion of hu­man rights, free trade prin­ci­ples and in­ter­na­tion­al norms gov­ern­ing re­la­tions be­tween sov­er­eign states.

How­ev­er, the state­ment con­clud­ed by not­ing that both Trinidad and To­ba­go and Guyana "re­serve their po­si­tions" on the mat­ter, ef­fec­tive­ly dis­tanc­ing them­selves from the po­si­tion adopt­ed by the re­gion­al body.

No rea­son was im­me­di­ate­ly pro­vid­ed by ei­ther coun­try for with­hold­ing sup­port for the state­ment.