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An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne has opened the new year stand­ing firm on his crit­i­cism of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, while sig­nalling a will­ing­ness to en­gage in di­a­logue to ease re­gion­al ten­sions and re­solve long-stand­ing fi­nan­cial dis­putes.

Speak­ing in a New Year’s Eve in­ter­view with state-owned ABS TV, Browne de­scribed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­newed char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of Cari­com as an “un­re­li­able part­ner” as “di­vi­sive” and “un­for­tu­nate”.

How­ev­er, he said he had no in­ter­est in es­ca­lat­ing a pub­lic feud, fram­ing his re­sponse in­stead as a nec­es­sary cor­rec­tion root­ed in what he de­scribed as his­tor­i­cal facts about the ben­e­fits Trinidad and To­ba­go has de­rived from re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion.