Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go has vot­ed in favour of a Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly res­o­lu­tion al­low­ing Pales­tin­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ab­bas to ad­dress this week’s high-lev­el de­bate vir­tu­al­ly af­ter the Unit­ed States barred him from trav­el­ling to New York.

It is the sec­ond time this month that Trinidad and To­ba­go has vot­ed dif­fer­ent­ly from the Unit­ed States at the UN, de­spite the Gov­ern­ment main­tain­ing close re­la­tions with Wash­ing­ton.

Con­fir­ma­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sup­port for the Pales­tine res­o­lu­tion came from the coun­try’s Am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed Na­tions Dr Neil Parsan.

The res­o­lu­tion was over­whelm­ing­ly adopt­ed on Thurs­day, with 152 coun­tries vot­ing in favour, three against and four ab­stain­ing.

The Unit­ed States, Is­rael and Paraguay vot­ed against the mea­sure, while Colom­bia, Hon­duras, Pana­ma and Pe­ru ab­stained.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s vote is con­sis­tent with its stat­ed sup­port for Pales­tine and a two-state so­lu­tion, and comes just two weeks af­ter it al­so sup­port­ed the UN’s “Cor­rect the Map” res­o­lu­tion, which the Unit­ed States op­posed.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s lat­est vote al­so fol­lows its for­mal recog­ni­tion of the State of Pales­tine on May 2, 2024, and the es­tab­lish­ment of diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions lat­er that year.

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers reaf­firmed that po­si­tion dur­ing last year’s UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly, telling Guardian Me­dia that the change of gov­ern­ment in 2025 had not al­tered Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­si­tion on the Is­raeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict.

Asked then how Trinidad and To­ba­go in­tend­ed to main­tain its po­si­tion on Pales­tine while pre­serv­ing its close re­la­tion­ship with Wash­ing­ton, Sobers said the two were not in­com­pat­i­ble.

“We are a sov­er­eign na­tion. The US re­spects us for our sov­er­eign­ty. And we have good re­la­tions with the Unit­ed States. So, we’ve adopt­ed a par­tic­u­lar po­si­tion in re­la­tion to this is­sue. They’ve re­spect­ed that and we con­tin­ue to have fan­tas­tic re­la­tions with the US,” he said.

The lat­est UN vote fol­lowed Wash­ing­ton’s de­ci­sion to ex­tend visa re­stric­tions on of­fi­cials of the Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­i­ty and mem­bers of the Pales­tine Lib­er­a­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion, pre­vent­ing Ab­bas from trav­el­ling to New York to ad­dress the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year.

The US said the re­stric­tions were be­ing ex­tend­ed be­cause of what it de­scribed as the Pales­tin­ian lead­er­ship’s fail­ure to re­form and “on­go­ing ac­tiv­i­ties that un­der­mine the prospects for peace.”

The Pales­tin­ian lead­er­ship re­ject­ed Wash­ing­ton’s po­si­tion and wel­comed the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly’s de­ci­sion.