The de­ci­sion by the new US gov­ern­ment to on­ly in­vite the Prime Min­is­ters of Ja­maica and An­tigua to a vir­tu­al meet­ing of 40 world lead­ers is cu­ri­ous if not an out­right snub of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

The meet­ing, which takes place on April 22 and 23rd, aims to bring to­geth­er the 17 coun­tries re­spon­si­ble for 80 per cent of glob­al emis­sions and glob­al GDP and oth­er coun­tries demon­strat­ing strong cli­mate lead­er­ship or are most vul­ner­a­ble to its im­pact.

While US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden is free to in­vite any­one to any meet­ing, it does seem at best cu­ri­ous that Row­ley was left out, if on­ly be­cause he is the serv­ing head of the re­gion­al block, Cari­com.

Had this not been the third time that the US has had ma­jor meet­ings with Cari­com gov­ern­ments and not in­vit­ed T&T, one may be pre­pared to over­look it, but it is in­creas­ing­ly wor­ry­ing that the US has not yet wel­comed Row­ley to any meet­ing with its ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship.

T&T has from its in­cep­tion been a leader and a ma­jor play­er in Cari­com. Its stand­ing has waned from time to time de­pend­ing on its eco­nom­ic for­tune and on its po­lit­i­cal po­si­tions.

In the last five years, the T&T gov­ern­ment has adopt­ed a po­si­tion of ini­tial­ly work­ing with the gov­ern­ment of Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, as it saw this coun­try’s eco­nom­ic and se­cu­ri­ty re­la­tion­ship with Cara­cas as be­ing im­por­tant.

As the US be­came more im­pa­tient with Maduro and sanc­tioned the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic, T&T found it­self in the in­vid­i­ous po­si­tion of hav­ing lost out on an im­por­tant sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas to its ail­ing down­stream sec­tor and thou­sands of mi­grants com­ing to the twin-is­land re­pub­lic seek­ing care and eco­nom­ic sur­vival.

The US, un­der then-Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, tried to fur­ther iso­late the Maduro regime and T&T’s po­si­tion of non-in­ter­fer­ence has led to it be­ing seen as non-co­op­er­a­tive by the US.

Per­haps as could be ex­pect­ed, Cari­com has not been able to re­sist the US moves to sep­a­rate the re­gion­al group­ing and this came to a head as Ja­maica, Haiti and the Ba­hamas sup­port­ed a scur­rilous at­tack on this coun­try’s de­fence of its bor­ders and ob­ser­va­tion of its laws.

This pa­per is on record as con­demn­ing the un­for­tu­nate at­tack on T&T at the OAS and has in the past point­ed out that part of the chal­lenge this coun­try al­so faces is the lack of diplo­mat­ic tact by Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley. His lat­est talk about re­gion­al beg­ging is just an­oth­er ex­am­ple of this.

But even so, the Op­po­si­tion UNC’s po­si­tion has not helped this coun­try’s cause, as a coun­try di­vid­ed against it­self can­not stand.

Cari­com al­so can­not al­low it­self to be di­vid­ed by any pow­er, as the Ba­jans are fa­mous for say­ing they are friends of all but satel­lite of none.

As oc­curred fol­low­ing the fail­ure of the Fed­er­a­tion, we must, as West In­di­ans, be de­ter­mined to prove that this chal­lenge would not be fa­tal to the spir­it of West In­di­an uni­ty and re­gion­al con­scious­ness.