U.S. Deputy Secretary of State to meet PM on energy, security

U.S. Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau is ex­pect­ed to meet Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing a vis­it to Trinidad and To­ba­go from Sun­day to Tues­day, with en­er­gy, se­cu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion ex­pect­ed to fea­ture promi­nent­ly on the agen­da.

Lan­dau’s vis­it is part of a wider re­gion­al trip that will al­so take him to Guyana, where he is sched­uled to meet Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali and mem­bers of the Guyanese Cab­i­net.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia note is­sued by the US State De­part­ment on Sun­day, Lan­dau’s dis­cus­sions with Per­sad-Bisses­sar will fo­cus on strength­en­ing bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries.

The State De­part­ment said the talks will in­clude “shared en­er­gy and se­cu­ri­ty pri­or­i­ties” as well as ef­forts to ad­vance eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion.

The vis­it comes as Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to po­si­tion it­self as a key en­er­gy hub in the Caribbean, while al­so seek­ing to strength­en its role in re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and in­vest­ment.

Lan­dau’s dis­cus­sions with the Prime Min­is­ter are al­so ex­pect­ed to pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the two coun­tries to ad­dress shared se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns and ex­plore ar­eas for deep­er co­op­er­a­tion.

The U.S. of­fi­cial will trav­el to Guyana fol­low­ing his Trinidad and To­ba­go vis­it. There, his dis­cus­sions with Ali and Cab­i­net mem­bers will fo­cus on ex­pand­ing bi­lat­er­al eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion and strength­en­ing in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

En­er­gy and crit­i­cal min­er­als are al­so iden­ti­fied as strate­gic ar­eas for in­creased col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Wash­ing­ton and George­town.

The U.S. State De­part­ment said Lan­dau’s trip is in­tend­ed to demon­strate Wash­ing­ton’s com­mit­ment to strength­en­ing part­ner­ships across the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

It said the vis­it will ad­vance shared pri­or­i­ties in­clud­ing re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, en­er­gy re­silience and eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty.

The re­gion­al tour comes against the back­drop of grow­ing U.S. en­gage­ment with Caribbean and South Amer­i­can coun­tries on en­er­gy and se­cu­ri­ty is­sues.

For Trinidad and To­ba­go, the meet­ing with Lan­dau could pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­in­force its long­stand­ing re­la­tion­ship with Wash­ing­ton while ad­vanc­ing co­op­er­a­tion in ar­eas con­sid­ered im­por­tant to the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic and strate­gic in­ter­ests.

The State De­part­ment did not pro­vide de­tails on spe­cif­ic agree­ments or ini­tia­tives ex­pect­ed to emerge from Lan­dau’s meet­ing with Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Lan­dau’s vis­it to Trinidad and To­ba­go and Guyana will run from Au­gust 9 to 12.