News Desk

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young was among Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) lead­ers who met in a vir­tu­al ses­sion yes­ter­day, ahead of face-to-face talks with Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio in Ja­maica on Wednes­day.

Two se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the Cari­com meet­ing be­gan at 2 pm and was on­go­ing up to 5.30 pm.

Young had al­so in­di­cat­ed to re­porters on Thurs­day that he had “spent quite a while on the tele­phone this morn­ing” with Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, who is al­so the Cari­com chair, “shar­ing ideas” ahead of yes­ter­day’s meet­ing.

“I gave her the as­sur­ance that Trinidad and To­ba­go will con­tin­ue to be at the front of the bat­ting line­up, stand­ing firm at the crease with Cari­com,” Young said with­out giv­ing any fur­ther de­tails about the meet­ing or Ru­bio’s vis­it to the re­gion.

Last week, it was an­nounced that Ru­bio would trav­el to the Caribbean be­fore the end of March for dis­cus­sions on is­sues af­fect­ing Cari­com-US re­la­tions.

The dis­clo­sure came af­ter US Spe­cial En­voy for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, Mauri­cio Claver-Carone, met in Wash­ing­ton with the rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Bar­ba­dos, the Ba­hamas, Be­lize, Do­mini­ca, Guyana, Haiti, Ja­maica, St. Kitts-Nevis, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Suri­name and T&T.

Sources al­so told CMC the Kingston meet­ing will dis­cuss Wash­ing­ton’s re­cent an­nounce­ment re­gard­ing the Cuban health brigade sys­tem; en­er­gy and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, and Haiti’s se­cu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty.

How­ev­er, not all re­gion­al lead­ers are ex­pect­ed to at­tend.

Cari­com coun­tries have de­fend­ed the Cuban health pro­gramme, which they say has ben­e­fit­ted the re­gion sig­nif­i­cant­ly, even as Ru­bio an­nounced re­cent­ly that Wash­ing­ton would be ex­pand­ing an ex­ist­ing Cu­ba-re­lat­ed visa re­stric­tion pol­i­cy that tar­gets forced labour linked to the Cuban labour ex­port pro­gramme.

“This ex­pand­ed pol­i­cy ap­plies to cur­rent or for­mer Cuban gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, and oth­er in­di­vid­u­als, in­clud­ing for­eign gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, who are be­lieved to be re­spon­si­ble for, or in­volved in, the Cuban labour ex­port pro­gramme, par­tic­u­lar­ly Cu­ba’s over­seas med­ical mis­sions,” Ru­bio said then.

Sev­er­al Cari­com lead­ers, in­clud­ing Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who demit­ted of­fice as T&T prime min­is­ter on Mon­day, Mia Bar­ba­dos’ Mot­t­ley, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines’ Dr Ralph Gon­salves and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da’s Gas­ton Browne, have pub­licly in­di­cat­ed their will­ing­ness to give up their Unit­ed States visas in a show of sol­i­dar­i­ty with Cu­ba.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s vir­tu­al meet­ing, the lead­ers were due to re­ceive an up­date on the sit­u­a­tion in Haiti, where crim­i­nal gangs are try­ing to over­throw the gov­ern­ment and ef­forts are be­ing made to hold fresh gen­er­al and pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in No­vem­ber this year.

In ad­di­tion, there was to be an up­date on the Guyana-Venezuela bor­der dis­pute.

Ear­li­er this week, Gon­salves trav­elled to George­town and Cara­cas, Venezuela, for sep­a­rate talks with Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali and Venezuela’s Nico­las Maduro, as ten­sions re­cent­ly resur­faced again be­tween the two coun­tries over the dis­put­ed Es­se­qui­bo re­gion.

A gov­ern­ment state­ment is­sued in Kingstown not­ed that Gon­salves, who serves as an in­ter­locu­tor, based on the Ar­gyle Agree­ment signed be­tween the two coun­tries in De­cem­ber 2023, had “cau­tioned that an es­ca­la­tion in­to open con­flict could dev­as­tate both na­tions, eco­nom­i­cal­ly and so­cial­ly and destab­lise the en­tire Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean re­gion, po­ten­tial­ly leav­ing us with a hu­man­i­tar­i­an and refugee prob­lem.

The state­ment said he ad­vised “both par­ties to re­solve the mat­ter so it does not lead to any con­flict,” re­call­ing that af­ter sign­ing the Ar­gyle Agree­ment in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, the “lead­ers had then re­it­er­at­ed their com­mit­ment to Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean re­main­ing a Zone of Peace”.

Re­gion­al lead­ers are al­so ex­pect­ed to dis­cuss a con­cept for a re­gion­al debt swap, as well as the im­pact of the an­nounced Unit­ed States tar­iffs on Chi­nese-built ships go­ing to US ports.