Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers says Trinidad and To­ba­go is more con­cerned with the sub­stance of diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment with Venezuela than with the cloth­ing or jew­ellery worn by act­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez.

Sobers made the com­ment dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, while re­spond­ing to ques­tions about con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing a brooch worn by Ro­dríguez de­pict­ing a map of Venezuela that in­cludes Guyana’s Es­se­qui­bo re­gion.

Last month, Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali wrote to Cari­com Chair­man Dr Ter­rance Drew ob­ject­ing to Ro­dríguez’s use of the brooch dur­ing of­fi­cial en­gage­ments with re­gion­al lead­ers, in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley.

In his let­ter, Ali de­scribed the dis­play as “deeply re­gret­table”, not­ing that bi­lat­er­al en­gage­ments be­tween Venezuela and Cari­com mem­ber states should not be ac­com­pa­nied by sym­bols as­sert­ing Venezuela’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al claim to Guyana’s Es­se­qui­bo re­gion. He al­so re­mind­ed re­gion­al lead­ers that Cari­com has con­sis­tent­ly sup­port­ed Guyana’s sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty and has backed the on­go­ing ju­di­cial process be­fore the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ).

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s brief­ing, Sobers was asked how close­ly Trinidad and To­ba­go was mon­i­tor­ing the is­sue, par­tic­u­lar­ly amid con­cerns that Venezue­lan maps as­sert­ing ter­ri­to­r­i­al claims may al­so in­clude Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He said he was aware on­ly of the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the brooch and had not seen any ref­er­ence to maps in­cor­po­rat­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“What I can tell you is that, yes, we have mon­i­tored the sit­u­a­tion be­tween Venezuela and Guyana, the ICJ. It’s a sit­u­a­tion that has been on­go­ing for quite some time,” Sobers said.

“The ICJ has heard ar­gu­ments on both sides. It will take time to de­lib­er­ate and ad­ju­di­cate on the mat­ter, and we will wait to see what comes out of that.”

He was lat­er asked whether Trinidad and To­ba­go would take a po­si­tion if Ro­dríguez were to vis­it the coun­try wear­ing the same brooch.

Sobers sug­gest­ed the gov­ern­ment’s pri­or­i­ty would re­main fo­cused on diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment be­tween both coun­tries.

“I think, and we ac­tu­al­ly joked about it, so I may get in trou­ble for say­ing this or not, but I don’t think we’d be that con­cerned, re­spect­ful­ly, with the clothes or the jew­ellery that In­ter­im Pres­i­dent Ro­dríguez wears,” he said.

“We would be most con­cerned with what our bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions pro­duce. That is where our con­cerns would lie.”

The con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the brooch has drawn crit­i­cism in Guyana, while Cari­com has cau­tioned mem­ber states against al­low­ing re­gion­al en­gage­ments to be used to ad­vance or le­git­imise ter­ri­to­r­i­al claims cur­rent­ly be­fore the ICJ.