Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Dr Lin­da Sobeh Ali, Am­bas­sador Des­ig­nate of the State of Pales­tine to T&T, pre­sent­ed her cre­den­tials to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo to­day at The Pres­i­dent’s House.

Fol­low­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, Dr Ali met with Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, Sad­dam Ho­sein, Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers, and Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Ran­dall Karim.

T&T for­mal­ly recog­nised the State of Pales­tine on May 2, 2024, un­der the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion and es­tab­lished diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions in Sep­tem­ber 2024. The move re­in­forced this coun­try’s sup­port for a two-state so­lu­tion and its long­stand­ing ad­vo­ca­cy for Pales­tin­ian rights at the Unit­ed Na­tions. Of­fi­cials said the es­tab­lish­ment of diplo­mat­ic ties re­flects Trinidad and To­ba­go’s on­go­ing com­mit­ment to in­ter­na­tion­al peace, se­cu­ri­ty, and hu­man­i­tar­i­an prin­ci­ples.

The Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs de­scribed the am­bas­sador’s ar­rival as “a mo­men­tous oc­ca­sion” as they of­fi­cial­ly wel­comed the new Am­bas­sador.

The Min­istry said, “We look for­ward to a fruit­ful and pro­duc­tive re­la­tion­ship with Her Ex­cel­len­cy and the State of Pales­tine.”

The re­lease not­ed that Am­bas­sador Ali was “re­ceived by Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers and Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Ran­dall Karim dur­ing an in­tro­duc­to­ry cour­tesy call,” pro­vid­ing “an op­por­tu­ni­ty to deep­en the bonds of friend­ship and co­op­er­a­tion be­tween our na­tions”.

Min­is­ter Sobers al­so in­tro­duced Am­bas­sador Ali to Min­is­ter Ho­sein.