Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says crit­i­cisms of her pro­pos­al to give con­di­tion­al re­lief to St Vin­cent, St Lu­cia and oth­er Cari­com states is a storm in a teacup. Per­sad-Bisses­sar made her first pub­lic de­fence of the state­ment dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at the of­fices of Fire One Fire­works, Ma­coya, one of the ware­hous­es used to store re­lief sup­plies to vic­tims of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters in T&T and the re­gion. At a news brief­ing on Mon­day Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her pro­pos­al was for T&T's as­sis­tance to the re­gion to be linked to some ben­e­fit to T&T cit­i­zens.

She said then: "There must be some way Trinidad and To­ba­go will al­so ben­e­fit. "So if it is that we are giv­ing as­sis­tance, for ex­am­ple for hous­ing... then we may be able to use Trinidad and To­ba­go builders and com­pa­nies so that what­ev­er mon­e­tary as­sis­tance is giv­en re­dounds back in some mea­sure to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go." She main­tained yes­ter­day her state­ment stood. She blamed an Ex­press head­line for the con­tro­ver­sy. "I think it's been tak­en out of con­text," she said. She in­sist­ed that she "saw noth­ing wrong with that (state­ment)... in­ter­na­tion­al­ly that is what is done." She added: "When the US in­vad­ed Iraq and af­ter they dam­aged Iraq, they then gave them the aid but the aid to re­con­struct Iraq was what?

"They used US firms. They used the US ma­te­ri­als. They used US com­pa­nies." She con­tin­ued: "Where would we source the ma­te­ri­als from for con­struc­tion? With T&T dol­lars in T&T. It seems to me a log­i­cal ex­pla­na­tion of it." The PM said the Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gon­salves, had sent her a fax re­quest­ing con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als, in­clud­ing ce­ment. She not­ed T&T was send­ing un­con­di­tion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid (wa­ter, food sup­plies, mat­tress­es and oth­er things) to St Vin­cent and St Lu­cia. Deal­ing with the is­sue of the Ja­maican-led boy­cott of T&T prod­ucts in protest of T&T's con­di­tion­al sup­port, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment al­ready had made a state­ment in the press there that it was not en­dors­ing that ini­tia­tive.

She said she did not want to ex­ac­er­bate the Ja­maican po­si­tion. She said: "The on­ly place this com­ment has re­al­ly come from is out of Ja­maica, as far as I am aware. "St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent have been re­al­ly bad­ly hit but have not made any such com­ment. They have ac­tu­al­ly made re­quests for goods and ser­vices," she in­sist­ed. "Diplo­mat­i­cal­ly, through the Prime Min­is­ter and the Deputy Prime Min­is­ter, I am not see­ing any com­ment where the (Ja­maican) Gov­ern­ment, is en­dors­ing it and I would not want to in­ter­vene in the pri­vate sec­tor of Ja­maica. "It's a free coun­try and they are free to voice their opin­ions." She in­sist­ed she was un­aware of any ad­verse com­ment in the diplo­mat­ic cir­cle.

She added there was no "ten­sion" in re­la­tions with oth­er Cari­com lead­ers, in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ters of St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines over her con­di­tion­al sup­port state­ment. "I ob­served none of that and no one shared any hos­til­i­ty or grave con­cern," she added. She in­sist­ed there al­ways would be dif­fer­ences of opin­ion but "I didn't pick up any hos­til­i­ty from any­one." She said all Cari­com Gov­ern­ments were "chal­lenged in these eco­nom­ic times. They ful­ly un­der­stand what we are say­ing and what we are try­ing to do."