Trinidad and Tobago PM holds bilateral talks with Norway

Trinidad and Tobago Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has met with Prime Min­is­ter of Nor­way, Er­na Sol­berg for dis­cus­sions on a num­ber of is­sues of mu­tu­al in­ter­est, the Of­fice of the Trinidad and Tobago Prime Min­is­ter said.

The talks with Prime Min­is­ter Sol­berg cov­ered sev­er­al is­sues in­clud­ing cli­mate change, the up­com­ing EU-ACP trade ne­go­ti­a­tions and the im­pact of the po­lit­i­cal and hu­man­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela on Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ear­li­er in the day, Dr Row­ley, to­geth­er with Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley and St Kitts and Nevis Tim­o­thy Har­ris, met with Prime Min­is­ter Sol­berg for talks which fo­cussed on the ap­proach to the Venezue­lan is­sue.

Par­ties to this dis­cus­sion re­it­er­at­ed their com­mit­ment to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing the search for a peace­ful so­lu­tion to the sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try.

In May the Gov­ern­ment of Nor­way fa­cil­i­tat­ed talks be­tween rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the main po­lit­i­cal ac­tors in Venezuela who demon­strat­ed a will­ing­ness to move for­ward in the search for an agreed-up­on and con­sti­tu­tion­al so­lu­tion to the po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and elec­toral is­sues.

Sol­berg spoke to the is­sue when she ad­dressed the wider group of re­gion­al lead­ers at to­day’s ple­nary ses­sion of the 40th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the CARI­COM Heads of Gov­ern­ment.

The Prime Min­is­ter of Nor­way said, “We have been en­gaged in con­flict res­o­lu­tion on sev­er­al con­ti­nents and have act­ed as a fa­cil­i­ta­tor in sev­er­al peace process­es, most re­cent­ly in Colom­bia and Venezuela. In Venezuela, the Gov­ern­ment and the op­po­si­tion have asked us to fa­cil­i­tate a ne­go­ti­at­ed so­lu­tion. There have been two rounds of con­struc­tive talks in Oslo.”

She not­ed, “Al­though the process is still frag­ile, it is my im­pres­sion that we have a win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty. In­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al back­ing for the ne­go­ti­a­tion process is cru­cial for its suc­cess. We there­fore ask CARI­COM and its mem­bers to sup­port the peace process in any way you can, in­clud­ing through your con­tact with the par­ties.”

Dur­ing the ple­nary ses­sion, heads re­ceived the in­ter­im re­port from the CARI­COM Com­mis­sion on the Econ­o­my which is led by Econ­o­mist Pro­fes­sor Avinash Per­saud.

The main ob­jec­tive of the re­struc­tured com­mis­sion is to pro­vide ad­vice on the im­ple­men­ta­tion of so­lu­tions to build re­silience and re­turn CARI­COM economies to a path of sus­tain­able growth and de­vel­op­ment.

The com­mis­sion will ad­dress the struc­tur­al chal­lenges af­fect­ing growth prospects of CARI­COM States and as­sist in the mo­bil­i­sa­tion of re­sources to un­lock the growth po­ten­tial of the Com­mu­ni­ty tak­ing in­to ac­count: fis­cal sus­tain­abil­i­ty and build­ing re­silience; debt re­lief and re­struc­tur­ing; cru­cial eco­nom­ic in­fra­struc­ture ser­vices, specif­i­cal­ly en­er­gy and in­for­ma­tion com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy to­wards the pro­mo­tion of eco­nom­ic ef­fi­cien­cy and the fin­tech and blockchain tech­nol­o­gy.