?Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er has called on his crit­ics to ex­am­ine his life.

He said he has ded­i­cat­ed his life to serv­ing the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. He said so dur­ing a meet­ing in South Africa on Sun­day night when he met with Russ­ian Min­is­ter of Sport Vi­taly Mutko who has pledged to work with the new Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Mutko is an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of Fi­fa, while Warn­er is the most se­nior Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent. Both are in South Africa to at­tend meet­ings pri­or to the open­ing of the World Cup on Fri­day. The is­sue of Warn­er be­ing a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter and af­fil­i­at­ed to Fi­fa was raised by new Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley short­ly af­ter he was sworn in last Fri­day by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards at Knowsley Build­ing. Row­ley said he in­tend­ed to write a let­ter to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion on the is­sue. On Sun­day, in re­sponse to Row­ley, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she would give "ac­tive con­sid­er­a­tion to con­cerns raised about Warn­er."

She said she was sure Warn­er would do what was ap­pro­pri­ate in all the cir­cum­stances. She said it in­volved an is­sue of law and an is­sue of ethics. Mutko said he was ea­ger to work with T&T in any way pos­si­ble, a re­lease from Warn­er stat­ed yes­ter­day. He de­scribed the meet­ing as a pos­i­tive step. Warn­er said: "I am in South Africa for on­ly a short time. This pledge is en­tire­ly un­ex­pect­ed, and I look for­ward to see­ing how this de­vel­op­ment ma­te­ri­alis­es. "I am on­ly an un­ex­pect­ed fa­cil­i­ta­tor in this process. I will pass the man­tle on to our ca­pa­ble Min­is­ter of Sport Anil Roberts to con­tin­ue dis­cus­sions with his Russ­ian coun­ter­part on this mat­ter. "At this time, I am lis­ten­ing to all that is be­ing said about my in­ter­na­tion­al af­fil­i­a­tions and I wel­come all to crit­i­cal­ly ex­am­ine my life."

He added: "I have said it on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions I have no se­crets. At this time, if my in­ter­na­tion­al of­fice can be used to ben­e­fit Trinidad and To­ba­go and the cit­i­zens of this na­tion then so be it. "I have ded­i­cat­ed my life to serv­ing the peo­ple of my great land and I will con­tin­ue to do that no mat­ter what of­fice I hold." The Russ­ian Min­ster of Sport, who like Warn­er, is al­so an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the Fi­fa ex­tend­ed an­oth­er in­vi­ta­tion to the Con­ca­caf pres­i­dent to vis­it Russ­ian Prime Min­is­ter Vladimir Putin. In April, Warn­er de­clined an in­vi­ta­tion from Putin to at­tend a spe­cial re­cep­tion in his ho­n­our.

He ex­plained to the Russ­ian leader then that he was busy dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign. Warn­er has cut short his trip to Africa and will re­turn to Trinidad ear­ly next week to at­tend the open­ing of Par­lia­ment and to ful­fil his min­is­te­r­i­al du­ties.