For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne is ex­pect­ed to have a “frank di­a­logue” with In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Arun Ku­mar Sahu to­day in a bid to ease pos­si­ble ten­sion be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Sahu over the PM’s re­marks on the am­bas­sador’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion to Trinidad on COVID-19 vac­cine do­na­tions from In­dia.

In a What­sapp mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day Browne dis­closed that he will have a di­a­logue with Sahu on “Mon­day 22, March 2021.”

Browne said their talks will not be held vir­tu­al­ly.

“I in­tend it to be an in-per­son di­a­logue,” Browne wrote.

How­ev­er, Browne did not give de­tails re­gard­ing where and what time the dis­cus­sion will be held.

“This is not about per­son­al­i­ties,” Browne in­sist­ed in his mes­sage.

This comes fol­low­ing the Row­ley-Sahu re­cent word ex­change over vac­cines from In­dia.

Row­ley had com­ment­ed last Thurs­day at a Con­ver­sa­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter meet­ing that Sahu did not com­mu­ni­cate any­thing about In­dia’s vac­cines to the Gov­ern­ment of T&T.

Sahu fired back at the PM stat­ing, “I don’t think it is in the pale of diplo­mat­ic de­cen­cy to per­son­al­ly at­tack a res­i­dent High Com­mis­sion­er.”

Al­though oth­er coun­tries through­out the re­gion are re­ceiv­ing COVID-19 vac­cines as gifts, Row­ley said Trinidad and To­ba­go will not go “beg­ging” for such gifts, es­pe­cial­ly if the vac­cines aren’t ap­proved by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO).

Browne had pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed that he had reached out to Sahu, stat­ing “di­a­logue and diplo­ma­cy” of­fer a chance for the coun­tries to draw close to­geth­er.

Yes­ter­day, Browne dis­closed “the re­la­tion­ship be­tween In­dia and Trinidad and To­ba­go has spanned the course of many gen­er­a­tions and has been built up­on shared his­to­ry, sac­ri­fice, diplo­ma­cy and a gen­uine con­nec­tion be­tween our peo­ples.”

He fur­ther wrote “Out of re­spect for that con­nec­tion, and for the fa­mil­ial, spir­i­tu­al and cul­tur­al ties that bind us, I have ex­tend­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for frank di­a­logue. Every right-think­ing per­son would ap­pre­ci­ate the val­ue of such mo­ments in shap­ing a har­mo­nious and pro­duc­tive fu­ture.”

At a press con­fer­ence ear­li­er on Sun­day, Op­po­si­tion MPs Rod­ney Charles and Dr Rishad Seecha­ran slammed Row­ley for at­tack­ing Sahu.

Seecha­ran said while every oth­er coun­try in the world was seek­ing out the best vac­cines for their pop­u­la­tion in 2020, the T&T Gov­ern­ment was sit­ting on its hat.

Seecha­ran said T&T went from the low­est test­ing rate to the low­est vac­ci­na­tion rate in Cari­com with on­ly 0.03 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed.

The Ca­roni East MP said Row­ley has "de­grad­ed" our Cari­com neigh­bours such as Bar­ba­dos by say­ing he would not beg for vac­cines.

Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles al­so slammed Row­ley for con­demn­ing Sahu.

He said T&T had en­gaged in a "pub­lic spat with the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the world's largest pro­duc­ers of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals at this time is un­war­rant­ed, un­called for, high­ly undiplo­mat­ic coun­ter­pro­duc­tive, and frankly em­bar­rass­ing."

He ques­tioned what Row­ley in­tend­ed to achieve by pub­licly re­buk­ing Sahu.

Charles said be­lat­ed at­tempts by Browne to mend fences with the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er "ig­nore the fact that the dam­age has al­ready been done."

Charles ac­cused Row­ley of den­i­grat­ing Cari­com col­leagues who re­ceived the vac­cines by im­ply­ing they were beg­gars.

"How does this im­prove our diplo­mat­ic stand­ing even in Cari­com? In fact, there is no irony in us beg­ging Bar­ba­dos who is ac­cused of beg­ging In­dia."

He said the tone of the PNM was to in­sult all and sundry.

So far, Charles said ten Caribbean na­tions have re­ceived 490,000 As­traZeneca vac­cines from In­dia.