T&T’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in last week­end’s meet­ing with Venezue­lan Na­tion­al As­sem­bly leader Juan Guai­do is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of this coun­try’s con­tin­ued main­te­nance of its po­si­tion on Venezuela, says For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Den­nis Moses.

Moses gave the re­ply yes­ter­day in Sen­ate fol­low­ing Op­po­si­tion queries on T&T’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the meet­ing.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Sen­a­tor Wade Mark asked Moses, who at­tend­ed the meet­ing, in which Caribbean lead­ers spoke to Guai­do in a video con­fer­ence, if that rep­re­sent­ed a change of T&T pol­i­cy.

T&T has main­tained a non-in­ter­ven­tion­ist, non-in­ter­fer­ence stance in the po­lit­i­cal cri­sis that has hung over Venezuela since Jan­u­ary. This af­ter a dead­lock de­vel­oped be­tween em­bat­tled pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro and Guai­do, who de­clared him­self in­ter­im pres­i­dent fol­low­ing elec­tions which he said were in­valid.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so de­fend­ed T&T non-in­ter­ven­tion stand at last week’s post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing as he fend­ed off crit­i­cism of T&T’s strat­e­gy in the mat­ter and not­ed that this coun­try had al­ways tak­en such stances in is­sues in­volv­ing sov­er­eign na­tions in ad­her­ence to the UN Char­ter.

The re­cent meet­ing in Bar­ba­dos, fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Cana­da - and sanc­tioned by Cari­com - was the first in­ter­ac­tion of Cari­com for­eign min­is­ters with Guai­do.

Cari­com has al­so main­tained a non-in­ter­fer­ence pol­i­cy, seek­ing to have di­a­logue be­tween both sides to re­solve the sit­u­a­tion peace­ful­ly.

How­ev­er, Moses’ ap­pear­ance at the meet­ing again raised is­sues about whether T&T was now throw­ing its sup­port with Guai­do.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Moses said T&T con­tin­ues to main­tain and im­ple­ment its on­ly for­eign pol­i­cy on the Venezue­lan sit­u­a­tion.

“Our par­tic­i­pa­tion (in the meet­ing) doesn’t rep­re­sent any change in pol­i­cy. It’s not a re­in­force­ment but con­tin­u­a­tion of our pol­i­cy,” he said.