Fol­low­ing his meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day, US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio’s of­fice re­leased the fol­low­ing state­ment:

Sec­re­tary Ru­bio met to­day with Trinidad and To­ba­go Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to dis­cuss the strong US-Trinidad and To­ba­go part­ner­ship, par­tic­u­lar­ly on re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and counter nar­cotics co­op­er­a­tion. He com­mend­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s steps to counter Transna­tion­al Crim­i­nal Or­gan­i­sa­tions and curb il­lic­it nar­cotics and firearms traf­fick­ing.

The lead­ers al­so dis­cussed ef­forts to re­store sta­bil­i­ty in Haiti, in­clud­ing through sup­port for the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion au­tho­ris­ing a UN Sup­port Of­fice for Haiti and Gang Sup­pres­sion Force.

The Sec­re­tary ac­knowl­edged the im­por­tance of en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty and re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty.

He out­lined US sup­port for the gov­ern­ment’s Drag­on gas pro­pos­al and steps to en­sure it will not pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit to the Maduro regime.

The Sec­re­tary em­pha­sised that deep­en­ing US-Trinidad and To­ba­go co­op­er­a­tion will be crit­i­cal to dis­rupt­ing nar­co­traf­fick­ing net­works, strength­en­ing re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, and safe­guard­ing our re­gion.