Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan yes­ter­day ex­pressed sup­port for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's de­ci­sion to co-spon­sor the Unit­ed Na­tions res­o­lu­tion on ter­ror­ism.He did so af­ter Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley told sup­port­ers at the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's (PNM) St Ann's East Con­stituen­cy's an­nu­al con­fer­ence that the prime min­is­ter should not have co-spon­sored the res­o­lu­tion.

Ram­bachan, speak­ing at the of­fi­cial open­ing of the $28 mil­lion Cal­cut­ta Bridge B1/3 at Bal­main, Cou­va, said Per­sad-Bisses­sar showed a lot of courage on Wednes­day in New York, in co-spon­sor­ing such an im­por­tant res­o­lu­tion.He said T&T is not im­mune to ter­ror­ism and re­ferred to the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup and the Port-of-Spain dust­bin bomber.

The res­o­lu­tion, which was sup­port­ed by over 90 coun­tries at the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing at the UN head­quar­ters in NY, was spear­head­ed by US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma.Ram­bachan said by co-spon­sor­ing the res­o­lu­tion, which al­lows for mon­i­tor­ing of ter­ror­ists' move­ments, T&T has made the bold state­ment of say­ing no to ter­ror­ism. He said he was heart­ened to see var­i­ous or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the Is­lam­ic com­mu­ni­ty, come out in sup­port of Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

This de­ci­sion by the prime min­is­ter, he said, shows that the Gov­ern­ment is not on­ly deal­ing with lo­cal is­sues, but glob­al chal­lenges of ter­ror­ism as well."We are liv­ing in chal­leng­ing times," Ram­bachan told Cal­cut­ta res­i­dents who had gath­ered to wit­ness the for­mal open­ing of the bridge they have been wait­ing on for the past 12 months.

Ram­bachan said he took is­sue with Row­ley's state­ments. He said the PNM leader did not un­der­stand in­ter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics and by his state­ments has shown that he is not fit to be prime min­is­ter of T&T."I think what you are see­ing is an op­po­si­tion leader who does not have any vi­sion, who does not un­der­stand glob­al pol­i­tics, who does not un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing in the in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment and at every turn he is show­ing that he lacks com­pe­tence to be a leader in this coun­try."