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For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has ex­pressed deep dis­ap­point­ment over the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to al­low the Unit­ed States to use Trinidad and To­ba­go’s air­ports for lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port op­er­a­tions, de­scrib­ing the move as an at­tempt to make the coun­try a “vas­sal state.”

Row­ley spoke to Guardian Me­dia on the is­sue out­side the Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist Church at Stan­more Av­enue, Port-of- Spain yes­ter­day, af­ter the fu­ner­al of Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) stal­wart Dr Fer­di­nand Fer­reira. He was asked to com­ment on re­cent de­vel­op­ments that have drawn crit­i­cism from Venezuela and re­newed de­bate amongst the pop­u­la­tion about the coun­try’s for­eign pol­i­cy di­rec­tion.

The for­mer prime min­is­ter said Trinidad and To­ba­go has his­tor­i­cal­ly guard­ed its sov­er­eign­ty care­ful­ly, even while main­tain­ing re­la­tions with ma­jor glob­al pow­ers. He ar­gued that the cur­rent ap­proach risks un­der­min­ing that lega­cy and ap­pears to be a sharp break from the long-stand­ing tra­di­tion of in­de­pen­dent diplo­ma­cy.