Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­si­tion of non-in­ter­ven­tion was raised be­fore the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly dur­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s vis­it last week but he was con­cerned that some are push­ing for mil­i­tary ac­tion in Venezuela.

“The whole is­sue of the se­cu­ri­ty of the re­gion is not to be tak­en for grant­ed be­cause there are pow­er­ful forces en­gaged in seek­ing mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion as a so­lu­tion for po­lit­i­cal prob­lems,” said the Prime Min­is­ter.

In a press con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said he sought to alert the UN of the plan by the plan of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States to in­voke the In­ter-Amer­i­can Treaty of Rec­i­p­ro­cal As­sis­tance, al­so known as the Rio Treaty, in re­sponse to the sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela.

The group has called for fur­ther sanc­tions to be placed in the South Amer­i­can state while stop­ping short of call­ing for a mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion to take place.

“I had gone to the Unit­ed Na­tions to alert the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary to what was hap­pen­ing with the Rio treaty be­ing in­voked and threat that it posed tak­ing us back to Jan­u­ary,” said Dr Kei­th Row­ley who said the re­cent meet­ing of the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly was im­por­tant for the small­er coun­tries of the world, like Caribbean states to have their voic­es be heard.

“We are very small, but we are not in­signif­i­cant, we are not to be dis­missed,” he said.

It was the sec­ond vote in Sep­tem­ber on the treaty.

In the lat­est vote in New York, on­ly Uruguay vot­ed against the res­o­lu­tion while Trinidad and To­ba­go ab­stained.

In the pre­vi­ous vote Cos­ta Ri­ca, Pana­ma and one oth­er vot­ed against, Dr Row­ley said.

He de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion to main­tain the ab­sten­tion as the stance as op­posed to out­right vot­ing against the move, as he said Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­si­tion had been guid­ed by prin­ci­ples and rep­re­sent­ed by its’ pol­i­cy.

Dur­ing his vis­it to New York, the Prime Min­is­ter al­so said he spoke with the Prime Min­is­ter of Nor­way Er­na Sol­berg.

Nor­way had cen­tral to an­oth­er ap­proach for res­o­lu­tion of the Venezue­lan sit­u­a­tion through me­di­a­tion. How­ev­er Dr Row­ley said fol­low­ing the vote on the Rio Treaty, few­er coun­tries seemed to be in favour of that ap­proach.

The Prime Min­is­ter how­ev­er once again re­ferred to re­cent re­port­ing from for­eign coun­tries about the mi­grant sit­u­a­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, which he sug­gest­ed helped placed more pres­sure on the de­ci­sion-mak­ing about Venezuela be­fore the Rio Treaty vote.

Dr Row­ley al­so ex­plained that some Cari­com states had ap­proached about the mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion process.

“One or two of Cari­com coun­tries would like to get some de­tails be­cause they want to do the same thing,” he said.

He al­so brushed off the re­cent vis­it by Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young to Venezuela, stat­ing it was im­por­tant to con­tin­ue com­mu­ni­ca­tion with our neigh­bour.

“Notwith­stand­ing that oth­er peo­ple be­lieve that we should not talk with them, we be­lieve that we should talk with them,” he said.