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Guyana’s Pres­i­dent, Dr Ir­faan Ali urged Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) lead­ers on Tues­day to ap­proach the grow­ing pres­ence of Unit­ed States naval as­sets in the Caribbean with “eyes wide open”, em­pha­sis­ing the need for ma­ture and open dis­cus­sions on se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters af­fect­ing the re­gion.

The state-owned De­part­ment of Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion (DPI) quot­ed Dr Ali as say­ing that while some Caribbean lead­ers may view the U.S. mil­i­tary buildup pos­i­tive­ly, Guyana recog­nis­es that the sit­u­a­tion re­quires care­ful ex­am­i­na­tion.

“The zone of peace is not on­ly about threats to bor­ders. It’s al­so about threats that we are now see­ing,” he said, not­ing con­cerns such as drug traf­fick­ing, il­le­gal mi­gra­tion, and the use of in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ter­ways for tran­ship­ment.