Gail Alexan­der

Air­force Two, bear­ing US vice-pres­i­dent Joe Biden and his 150-mem­ber del­e­ga­tion, will touch down at Pi­ar­co Air­port's south ter­mi­nal at 4 pm on Mon­day.At a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices Ltd of­fi­cials said the con­tin­gent will in­clude grand­chil­dren of Biden and his wife, Jill, as well as two US me­dia of­fi­cials.The US vice-pres­i­dent is vis­it­ing T&T over Mon­day and Tues­day to hold dis­cus­sions on se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er is­sues.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said last week that fo­cus will be on a se­cu­ri­ty agree­ment which the US has al­ready signed with sev­er­al Cari­com states, but not yet with T&T.Biden and his del­e­ga­tion will be met by Per­sad-Bisses­sar and oth­er of­fi­cials at the air­port, where he will al­so re­ceive a T&T ho­n­our guard salute and steel­band wel­come.

Dur­ing Tues­day's agen­da, the US del­e­ga­tion will pay a cour­tesy call on Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona at the Pres­i­dent's of­fice and lat­er, an of­fi­cial cour­tesy call on the Prime Min­is­ter at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's.Both heads of state will al­so host a press con­fer­ence lat­er in the day.The US del­e­ga­tion will de­part on Tues­day af­ter­noon.

Se­cu­ri­ty sweeps have been tak­ing place at var­i­ous des­ti­na­tion points, in­clud­ing the Hilton Trinidad, in prepa­ra­tion for the US vis­it.The pres­i­dent of Chi­na will al­so vis­it T&T the fol­low­ing week ac­com­pa­nied by a 280-mem­ber del­e­ga­tion. Six­ty of this num­ber are jour­nal­ists.