Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day met with Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res, a dis­cus­sion she de­scribed as “very, very good” for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the meet­ing out­side of the UN Head­quar­ters in New York Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the agen­da was quite broad and was fo­cused on, “cli­mate change is­sues, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty, food se­cu­ri­ty, fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty, those are the broad ar­eas dis­cussed, and of course the com­mit­ment and sol­i­dar­i­ty to work with the UN as we go for­ward to work with the UN agen­cies”.

She not­ed that an­oth­er is­sue that came up was non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs), adding, “We are on that jour­ney as well, to work with them.”

T&T’s seat at the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil as a non-per­ma­nent mem­ber was al­so dis­cussed.

“You may or may not know, we ap­plied for a seat on the UN Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, there has been no ob­jec­tion to that, there has been no oth­er nom­i­na­tion, so it means we would have suc­ceed­ed, and I thank our team, we would have suc­ceed­ed in se­cur­ing that seat on the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.”

T&T would as­sume its seat on the coun­cil for the 2027-2028 pe­ri­od.

Meet­ing with Ru­bio on Tues­day

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so spoke about her up­com­ing meet­ing on Tues­day with Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the in­vi­ta­tion to speak with Ru­bio was a “wel­come sur­prise”.

Asked on Fri­day by Guardian Me­dia what would be on the agen­da, the PM sim­ply said, “Trinidad and To­ba­go first.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she and her del­e­ga­tion would be go­ing to DC via US pub­lic trans­port.

“We leave Mon­day evening, we have to go by train, just like you, you have to use a train. I think it will take us three hours to get to Wash­ing­ton. And we meet him first thing in the morn­ing, Tues­day. And then by Tues­day af­ter­noon, we come back down to New York. There’s no flight out of Wash­ing­ton to Trinidad. So we’ll come back down here and we leave on now, in­stead of Tues­day de­part­ing, we leave on Wednes­day af­ter­noon.”

Guardian Me­dia asked if there would be any meet­ing with US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, con­sid­er­ing Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali met with him on Fri­day.

“There’s no item on our agen­da for that. But we look for­ward to meet­ing with Sec­re­tary Ru­bio. And we ful­ly un­der­stand if there’s no such meet­ing. Af­ter all, he’s the leader of the free world. And al­most every coun­try prob­a­bly wants to meet. So we’ll be hap­py with Sec­re­tary Ru­bio,” she replied. —Akash Sama­roo