Gail Alexan­der

This coun­try’s pol­i­cy has al­ways been to sup­port stead­fast recog­ni­tion of the State of Is­rael with se­cure ter­ri­to­r­i­al bor­ders as well as es­tab­lish­ment of a Pales­tin­ian State, the For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Den­nis Moses said yes­ter­day.

He gave this ex­pla­na­tion when asked about T&T’s ab­sten­tion from Thurs­day’s vote in the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly res­o­lu­tion on the sta­tus of Jerusalem.

The UN moved a res­o­lu­tion on the is­sue af­ter US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s re­cent de­c­la­ra­tion of Jerusalem as Is­rael’s cap­i­tal. The Gen­er­al As­sem­bly vot­ed 128-9 to deem Trump’s de­c­la­ra­tion “null and void”.

Moses said, 128 coun­tries, in­clud­ing Guyana, Bar­ba­dos, Suri­name, Grena­da, Do­mini­ca, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Be­lize, Venezuela and ma­jor al­lies of the Unit­ed States vot­ed in favour of the res­o­lu­tion, while nine coun­tries, in­clud­ing Is­rael and the Unit­ed States, vot­ed against it.

T&T was among 35 coun­tries, in­clud­ing Ja­maica, The Ba­hamas, An­tigua, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Haiti, Pana­ma, Mex­i­co and Cana­da, that ab­stained. St Kitts and Nevis and St Lu­cia were among 21 coun­tries which were not present for the vote.

“Es­sen­tial­ly, the res­o­lu­tion goes against the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca for its re­cent de­ci­sion to move its em­bassy to Jerusalem as the cap­i­tal of Is­rael.” Moses said.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pol­i­cy has al­ways been to sup­port the two states pol­i­cy which means stead­fast recog­ni­tion of the State of Is­rael with se­cure ter­ri­to­r­i­al bor­ders as well as the es­tab­lish­ment of a Pales­tin­ian State.

“It is in this con­text that any and all ne­go­ti­a­tions re­lat­ing to the fu­ture of Jerusalem arise. We would wish to see the Unit­ed States play a ma­jor role in bring­ing this about by pre­serv­ing its po­si­tion as an in­flu­en­tial bro­ker in all ne­go­ti­a­tions which would have peace and se­cu­ri­ty as its pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive.”

Moses added: “It is the sov­er­eign­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go that al­lows us to have been ahead of our time in sup­port­ing a One Chi­na pol­i­cy and in stand­ing in op­po­si­tion to the con­tin­u­a­tion of the em­bar­go against Cu­ba.”

“Trinidad and To­ba­go stands with all our part­ners, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States, in pur­suance of these ob­jec­tives which we gen­uine­ly be­lieve will con­tribute to world peace and ad­vance hu­man­i­ty in an im­proved world eco­nom­ic or­der.”