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Da­reece Po­lo

Caribbean lead­ers have ral­lied in de­fence of Cari­com, af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­liv­ered a sharp cri­tique at the open­ing of the 50th Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing in St Kitts this week.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ad­dress ques­tioned the bloc’s stance on re­gion­al sov­er­eign­ty, de­fend­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sup­port of Unit­ed States op­er­a­tions against Venezuela, crit­i­cised al­leged in­ter­fer­ence in re­gion­al elec­tions and fault­ed the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at over its re­sponse to the kid­nap­ping of T&T na­tion­al Brent Thomas.