The wider Caribbean has of­fered to be­come in­ter­me­di­aries be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela amid their cur­rent height­ened ten­sions and the mil­i­tary build-up in the re­gion, which has trig­gered deep con­cerns about the threat of war, and has now prompt­ed moves to pre­vent it.

Do­mini­ca’s Prime Min­is­ter, Roo­sevelt Sker­rit, said yes­ter­day that Do­mini­ca, Bar­ba­dos, and the wider Caribbean are of­fer­ing them­selves as in­ter­me­di­aries to bring of­fi­cials of the US and Venezuela to­geth­er.

Sker­rit made the state­ment yes­ter­day when he ad­dressed the sec­ond day of the Bar­ba­dos Labour Par­ty’s two-day con­fer­ence in Bridgetown.

On the con­fer­ence’s first day, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley ex­pressed deep con­cern about the se­cu­ri­ty buildup in the re­gion and the height­ened US-Venezue­lan ten­sions. She made a con­cert­ed call for the re­gion to re­main a Zone of Peace and strong­ly urged di­a­logue to pre­vent war. Mot­t­ley al­so not­ed Bar­ba­dos’ lo­ca­tion, where a pact had once been signed be­tween the two coun­tries.

Sker­rit, in his ad­dress to the BLP yes­ter­day, said he had fol­lowed Mot­t­ley’s speech on Sat­ur­day and had ex­tract­ed a por­tion of her re­marks, which he post­ed to the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment chat group yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Sker­rit added, “I did so, so that my col­leagues could un­der­stand that lead­er­ship is cru­cial­ly im­por­tant to­day, now more than ever, and we have to be count­ed. We can­not cow­er un­der fear. We have to stand for prin­ci­ple and stand on the shoul­ders of the sac­ri­fices of our fore­par­ents who fought for our free­dom and for our in­de­pen­dence, and we must al­ways speak truth to pow­er.”

He said Mot­t­ley’s speech “was ab­solute­ly truth to pow­er, rep­re­sent­ing what this great par­ty and great coun­try stand for, and what our fore­par­ents had fought for, for so many gen­er­a­tions.”

Sker­rit con­tin­ued, “And so we stand with you on this, and this world, this Caribbean, must con­tin­ue be­ing a Zone of Peace. We do not want any wars in our re­gion.

“We solve prob­lems by dis­cus­sions, by di­a­logue, with diplo­ma­cy, and we some­times have to agree to dis­agree — but we must do so peace­ful­ly and with re­spect for each oth­er.

“Of course, we in Bar­ba­dos and Do­mini­ca, and in­deed the wider Caribbean, of­fer our­selves as in­ter­me­di­aries so that we can bring the two forces to­geth­er and let us un­der­stand that there can be com­mon sense and agree­ment, and dis­agree­ment — but we have to en­sure that we do not have a sit­u­a­tion of our re­gion de­scend­ing in­to tur­moil,” he added, thank­ing Mot­t­ley for her strong mes­sage to the BLP and “to the world.”

He added, “Be­cause if a war breaks out in the Caribbean, we would have some se­ri­ous chal­lenges in our re­spec­tive coun­tries.”

Sker­rit said re­gion­al states have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing by adding their voic­es so that rea­son and com­mon sense pre­vail. “And let us work out our prob­lems to­geth­er.”

Last week, for­mer T&T prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and ten oth­er for­mer Cari­com heads of state have urged ad­her­ence to the Caribbean’s con­sis­tent pat­tern of re­frain­ing from per­mit­ting mil­i­tary as­sets in­to the re­gion that have the po­ten­tial to lure the area in­to con­flicts.

The ap­peal for peace came from for­mer heads of Cari­com ter­ri­to­ries Bald­win Spencer (An­tigua and Bar­bu­da), Said Musa and Dean Bar­row (Be­lize), Fre­un­del Stu­art (Bar­ba­dos), Edi­son James (Do­mini­ca), Till­man Thomas (Grena­da), Don­ald Ramo­tar (Guyana), Bruce Gold­ing and PJ Pat­ter­son (Ja­maica), and Ken­ny An­tho­ny (St Lu­cia).