The wider Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) has re­it­er­at­ed its po­si­tion that the Caribbean must re­main a ‘zone of peace’.

In a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, Cari­com said lead­ers “dis­cussed the in­creased se­cu­ri­ty build-up in the Caribbean and the po­ten­tial im­pacts on mem­ber states”, and “save in re­spect of Trinidad and To­ba­go, who re­served its po­si­tion, heads agreed” to reaf­firm “the prin­ci­ple of main­tain­ing the Caribbean re­gion as a zone of peace”.

The group al­so re­it­er­at­ed the im­por­tance of di­a­logue and en­gage­ment to­wards the peace­ful res­o­lu­tion of dis­putes and con­flict. Cari­com said it “re­mains will­ing to as­sist to­wards that ob­jec­tive”, and that Heads of Gov­ern­ment “re­it­er­at­ed their con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to fight­ing nar­co-traf­fick­ing and the il­le­gal trade in small arms and light weapons which ad­verse­ly af­fect the re­gion”.

The re­lease not­ed that ef­forts to ad­dress these chal­lenges should be pur­sued “through on­go­ing in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion and with­in in­ter­na­tion­al law”, while reaf­firm­ing “un­equiv­o­cal sup­port for the sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty of coun­tries in the Re­gion and the safe­ty and liveli­hoods of the peo­ple of the Re­gion”.

In its of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, all mem­bers, ex­cept for Trinidad and To­ba­go—which re­served its po­si­tion—agreed on the fol­low­ing:

• That the Caribbean be main­tained as a zone of peace, and that di­a­logue and en­gage­ment are im­por­tant to the res­o­lu­tion of re­gion­al con­flicts.

• A com­mit­ment to fight­ing nar­co-traf­fick­ing and the il­le­gal small arms trade.

• Un­equiv­o­cal sup­port for the sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty of their in­di­vid­ual coun­tries.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who at­tend­ed the Cari­com meet­ing vir­tu­al­ly on Thurs­day, said she reaf­firmed a com­mit­ment to build­ing a safer, stronger, and more pro­duc­tive Caribbean re­gion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, speak­ing af­ter two Las Cuevas fish­er­men were killed in a US airstrike on a boat in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters off Venezuela’s coast last week, reaf­firmed her ear­li­er re­marks that traf­fick­ers should “all be killed vi­o­lent­ly”.

“I stand by my pre­vi­ous com­ments. Noth­ing has oc­curred to cause any change in my opin­ion,” she told a dai­ly news­pa­per.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers did not re­spond to calls from Guardian Me­dia.