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The T&T Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day re­it­er­at­ed why it is stand­ing apart from its Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) neigh­bours by de­clin­ing to sup­port a re­gion­al po­si­tion on key se­cu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty is­sues, in­clud­ing the grow­ing US mil­i­tary pres­ence in the re­gion.

In a state­ment, the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs said the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led gov­ern­ment “wish­es to once more, cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly ex­press its strong sup­port for the on­go­ing mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion of the Unit­ed States in the re­gion.” The state­ment added that these op­er­a­tions, aimed at com­bat­ting nar­cotics and hu­man traf­fick­ing and oth­er forms of transna­tion­al crime, help es­tab­lish the Caribbean as a “Zone of Peace” where cit­i­zens can live and work safe­ly.

On Sat­ur­day, the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at in Guyana said re­gion­al lead­ers met to dis­cuss se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, in­clud­ing US mil­i­tary build-up, but T&T did not en­dorse the col­lec­tive po­si­tion. The meet­ing fol­lows a se­ries of US strikes tar­get­ing sus­pect­ed drug-traf­fick­ing ves­sels off Venezuela, the lat­est re­port­ed­ly claim­ing the lives of two Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als.