Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley has said the em­bar­rass­ment caused by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to host the Cu­ba-Cari­com Sum­mit at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre-a Unit­ed States as­set in T&T-could have been avoid­ed. The Gov­ern­ment was forced to shift to­day's con­fer­ence from the Hilton to the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts in Port-of-Spain (NA­PA) be­cause of the ex­ist­ing US trade em­bar­go on com­mu­nist Cu­ba. Row­ley was ques­tioned on the is­sue at his Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, of­fice, yes­ter­day. He said "bet­ter for­eign af­fairs savvy was re­quired" to en­sure such de­vel­op­ments did not take place in T&T. Row­ley said the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs had to be ahead of the game.

He said while T&T did not agree with the em­bar­go, the coun­try knew it ex­ist­ed. He said the Gov­ern­ment should not have sched­uled the con­fer­ence for that venue in the first place. Mean­while, Row­ley wel­comed the host­ing of the con­fer­ence. He said the Caribbean is­land was mov­ing to­wards a mar­ket econ­o­my "and from that stand­point, we should have tremen­dous in­ter­est in Cu­ba." He added: "Every­thing and any­thing we can do for and with Cu­ba should be in our in­ter­est." Asked if clos­er ties with Cu­ba would neg­a­tive­ly af­fect T&T's re­la­tions with the Unit­ed States, Row­ley said he didn't think so.

He said the US "knows that T&T was an in­de­pen­dent coun­try, we re­spect and trea­sure our re­la­tions with the Unit­ed States, but we have al­ways main­tained that Cu­ba is a Caribbean coun­try and while we don't sup­port its ex­cess­es, we al­ways main­tain that Cu­ba is an in­te­gral part of the Caribbean's fu­ture." He said the Unit­ed States was "way be­hind time for try­ing to pun­ish Cu­ba for be­ing a com­mu­nist coun­try, while com­mu­nist Chi­na owns the Amer­i­can trea­sury." Sev­er­al Cari­com lead­ers, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Cuban Pres­i­dent Raul Cas­tro, are ex­pect­ed to at­tend to­day's con­fer­ence, which is aimed at de­vel­op­ing clos­er eco­nom­ic ties be­tween Cu­ba and Cari­com mem­ber states.