Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is trav­el­ling to Bar­ba­dos this morn­ing to meet with a high-lev­el del­e­ga­tion from the Unit­ed States, who wish to en­gage with sev­er­al Cari­com lead­ers.

The Prime Min­is­ter de­tailed the trip at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain. Row­ley, who not­ed that he had just re­turned from Cari­com meet­ings in Guyana, said it wasn’t his in­ten­tion to leave T&T again.

“But an­oth­er de­vel­op­ment has come up in Bar­ba­dos this week­end where a high-lev­el del­e­ga­tion from the Unit­ed States is in the re­gion want­i­ng to meet with cer­tain Cari­com lead­ers, and I’ve been per­suad­ed that I should be there,” he said. “So I trav­el to Bar­ba­dos to meet with some de­ci­sion-mak­ers and rank­ing mem­bers of the US Gov­ern­ment, which is cur­rent­ly in tran­si­tion. We have a num­ber of is­sues on the ta­ble, not the least of which is some­thing called the Bridgetown Ini­tia­tive.”

The 2022 Ini­tia­tive led by Bar­ba­dos fo­cused on re­form­ing the way rich coun­tries fi­nance poor coun­tries in a cli­mate cri­sis, de­tail­ing ways to change how de­vel­op­ment fi­nance works. It sought to get in­sti­tu­tions to treat re­gion­al states more fair­ly in the cur­rent dif­fi­cult times and to get terms and con­di­tions con­cern­ing ex­ter­nal fi­nanc­ing.

Row­ley said in the ef­fort led by Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley he had been to Wash­ing­ton on more than one oc­ca­sion, and the US del­e­ga­tion has been to the Caribbean. “We think we made some progress, but it’s crys­tallised in some­thing called the Bridgetown Ini­tia­tive, which we need to de­fend, grow and ad­vance in the US au­thor­i­ties and to the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial bod­ies. There­fore we meet in Bar­ba­dos,” Row­ley ex­plained.

Row­ley re­turns Sun­day.

‘We sim­ply have to
work with US change’

On whether or not the Gov­ern­ment was afraid the change in the US ad­min­is­tra­tion would see an in­creas­ing­ly hard­line ap­proach to Venezuela and af­fect T&T’s projects there, the Prime Min­is­ter said in ac­cept­ing the re­al­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion he had seen it said that “prob­lems that don’t have so­lu­tions aren’t prob­lems but are part of the land­scape.”

He in­di­cat­ed T&T isn’t in a po­si­tion to in­flu­ence US lo­cal or in­ter­na­tion­al diplo­ma­cy and pol­i­cy. “We sim­ply have to work with it, and in these mat­ters, when we’re there—be­cause we’re a play­er in world trade—you see what’s hap­pen­ing with world trade be­tween US, Mex­i­co and Cana­da ... we’re a small mi­cro­cos­mic ex­pres­sion of that here.”

Row­ley said Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young was go­ing to Cara­cas on Tues­day, “Be­cause we have to stay en­gaged. There’s a lot at stake for the peo­ple of T&T. We’re hop­ing, an­tic­i­pat­ing, and ad­vo­cat­ing it works out for us. But we’re there.”

On whether the progress made with the De­mo­c­rat ad­min­is­tra­tion may be af­fect­ed by the in­com­ing Re­pub­li­can ad­min­is­tra­tion, Row­ley said, “It might very well be.” “There­fore, if the Gov­ern­ment changes, our ar­gu­ment is still the same to the US gov­ern­ment—that you as a Gov­ern­ment recog­nise our po­si­tion ... and the ef­fects on our po­si­tion re­gard­less of who’s in Wash­ing­ton.”

Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment may have more ac­cess to some peo­ple than oth­ers, and the Gov­ern­ment has worked along­side Re­pub­li­cans.

He not­ed that when the US del­e­ga­tion came to T&T the last time un­der Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken, there was at least one Re­pub­li­can.

“So we talk to the Amer­i­can Gov­ern­ment and we’ve been able to get many peo­ple to un­der­stand where we are as a na­tion, hav­ing to deal with the Venezue­lan sit­u­a­tion, our own sat­u­ra­tion.”

He al­so said, “As I speak now there are two ves­sels work­ing with the Drag­on field ... un­der a T&T ini­tia­tive with an OFAC li­cence from a tur­bu­lent Wash­ing­ton with a 30-year con­tract from Venezuela. When I put all these things to­geth­er, I feel sat­is­fied that his­to­ry has been made and the fu­ture for T&T—whether to­mor­row or next month—in com­merce, hy­dro­car­bon, gas, to­day is much bet­ter than be­fore Sep­tem­ber 2015.”