Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

Re­port­ing from UN­GA, New York

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been in­vit­ed to Wash­ing­ton, DC, to speak with Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio.

She re­vealed this to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, as she left the Unit­ed Na­tions Head­quar­ters in New York fol­low­ing her ad­dress to the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA).

Guardian Me­dia was told the PM will be hav­ing high-lev­el meet­ings with the US dur­ing her of­fi­cial vis­it to the US.

Asked about the sta­tus of those meet­ings yes­ter­day, the Prime Min­is­ter said, “Well, you may not know yet, but we’ve been in­vit­ed to Wash­ing­ton. I in­tend to go on Mon­day evening for meet­ings with Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio on Tues­day morn­ing. So, we’ll fur­ther have dis­cus­sions on what oth­er ways, bi­lat­er­al par­tic­i­pa­tion, co­op­er­a­tion, when we get there.”

Asked what will be on the agen­da, the Prime Min­is­ter would on­ly say.

“The agen­da is Trinidad first. And we thank the US for part­ner­ing with us in this out­come.”

The Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has pre­vi­ous­ly hailed T&T as an al­ly in its fight against Venezue­lan and Mex­i­can drug car­tels in the re­gion.

In Au­gust, dur­ing a Cab­i­net meet­ing, Ru­bio told Pres­i­dent Trump that sev­er­al coun­tries have backed the US in its ef­forts to com­bat drug traf­fick­ers in Caribbean wa­ters.

“Coun­tries just in the last week, Ecuador, Paraguay, Guyana, Trinidad, to­day Ar­genti­na, all join­ing us or try­ing to be help­ful in ad­vanc­ing this,” Ru­bio re­vealed.

He al­so men­tioned, “An­oth­er thing is to build an in­ter­na­tion­al coali­tion against the scourge on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage.”

And in its mes­sage to T&T on this coun­try’s In­de­pen­dence Day, Ru­bio high­light­ed on­go­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with the coun­try in ad­vanc­ing re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and pros­per­i­ty, point­ing to joint ef­forts to dis­man­tle transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions, dis­rupt nar­co-traf­fick­ing net­works and strength­en re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

He reaf­firmed Wash­ing­ton’s com­mit­ment to con­tin­ued co­op­er­a­tion un­der the lead­er­ship of Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar.