T&T was the sole Cari­com mem­ber to back the Unit­ed States’ mil­i­tary pres­ence in the re­gion at an emer­gency meet­ing of the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States (CELAC).

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers said yes­ter­day that CELAC re­quest­ed a meet­ing on Mon­day and sought to draft a com­mu­nique on be­half of all mem­bers, con­demn­ing the US mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Caribbean.

“Es­sen­tial­ly, what the com­mu­nique was say­ing is that the pres­ence of the US with­in the re­gion, the mil­i­tary pres­ence, could cause in­sta­bil­i­ty. And it could be a threat against, es­sen­tial­ly, re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty,” Sobers said.

He added, “They’re say­ing it goes against the tenets of CELAC, which is about dis­ar­ma­ment of nu­clear weapons and keep­ing our re­gion of peace and sta­bil­i­ty.”

How­ev­er, he said T&T, along with some Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, ob­ject­ed.

“We said, lis­ten, we’re not in sup­port of that, and we are not in sup­port for these rea­sons.”

Ex­plain­ing the rea­sons for this coun­try’s ob­jec­tion, Sobers said, “We sup­port all of those things, re­gion of peace, sta­bil­i­ty. But there’s no ev­i­dence to sug­gest that the US’ in­ter­ven­tion against transna­tion­al crime will desta­bilise re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty. There’s no ev­i­dence to sug­gest that the US’ in­ter­ven­tion against transna­tion­al crime would cause the re­gion to be a re­gion that does not hold true to the tenets of peace.”

Asked which oth­er coun­tries shared sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, Sobers said, “Ar­genti­na, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Ecuador, Paraguay, Pe­ru, Pana­ma and Cost Ri­ca.”

US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio yes­ter­day vis­it­ed Ecuador to ad­dress is­sues such as transna­tion­al crime and drug traf­fick­ing.

Guardian Me­dia asked Sobers if it con­cerned him that T&T stood alone in Cari­com with re­spect to its sup­port of the US.

“No, it didn’t, be­cause we re­spect every­body’s sov­er­eign­ty. The same way that Cari­com re­spects our sov­er­eign­ty when it comes to mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. And this is a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ter, and our po­si­tion as it per­tains to sup­port in the US, Cari­com re­spects our sov­er­eign­ty,” he said.

He said T&T is dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect­ed by crime in the re­gion and must act in its best in­ter­est.

“We are not in sup­port be­cause we are the ones who, this coun­try, has dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly been af­fect­ed by transna­tion­al crime.

“The sta­tis­tics with crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go is one of the high­est with­in the Caribbean. So, when it comes to the rest of Cari­com, crime af­fects us in a dis­pro­por­tion­ate way,” he ex­plained.

Sobers said this is the first time with­in re­cent mem­o­ry that this coun­try has re­ceived a “phys­i­cal in­ter­ven­tion” in its fight against crime.

“And any right-think­ing per­son would want to wel­come that lev­el of in­ter­ven­tion,” he added.

Cari­com is yet to make a state­ment on the on­go­ing US pres­ence in the re­gion. How­ev­er, AL­BA (Bo­li­var­i­an Al­liance for the Peo­ples of Our Amer­i­ca), which fea­tures some Cari­com mem­bers (An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Do­mini­ca, Saint Kitts and Nevis, St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines), has unan­i­mous­ly re­ject­ed the de­ploy­ment of US war­ships, sub­marines, and troops to the Caribbean, call­ing it a “new demon­stra­tion of im­pe­r­i­al force.”

↔—Akash Sama­roo