The wider Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) has re­it­er­at­ed its po­si­tion that the Caribbean must re­main a ‘zone of peace’.

In a re­lease is­sued to­day, CARI­COM said lead­ers “dis­cussed the in­creased se­cu­ri­ty build-up in the Caribbean and the po­ten­tial im­pacts on Mem­ber States”, and “save in re­spect of Trinidad and To­ba­go who re­served its po­si­tion, heads agreed” to reaf­firm “the prin­ci­ple of main­tain­ing the Caribbean Re­gion as a Zone of Peace.

The group al­so re­it­er­at­ed the im­por­tance of di­a­logue and en­gage­ment to­wards the peace­ful res­o­lu­tion of dis­putes and con­flict.

CARI­COM said it “re­mains will­ing to as­sist to­wards that ob­jec­tive”, and that Heads of Gov­ern­ment “re­it­er­at­ed their con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to fight­ing nar­co-traf­fick­ing and the il­le­gal trade in small arms and light weapons which ad­verse­ly af­fect the Re­gion.”

The re­lease not­ed that ef­forts to ad­dress these chal­lenges should be pur­sued “through on­go­ing in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion and with­in in­ter­na­tion­al law”, while reaf­firm­ing “un­equiv­o­cal sup­port for the sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty of coun­tries in the Re­gion and the safe­ty and liveli­hoods of the peo­ple of the Re­gion.”

Say­ing she was due to at­tend the CARI­COM meet­ing, T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, did not take ques­tions from re­porters on Thurs­day about the Las Cuevas fish­er­men killed in a U.S. airstrike on a boat in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters near to Venezuela’s coast.