Barbados will not abandon its long-standing ties with Cuba despite international sanctions, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister Senator Chris Sinckler said on Tuesday, stressing that the island will work with all sides to ensure the Cuban people benefit from any future developments.
Insisting that Barbados and the Caribbean have had a long-standing beneficial relationship with Cuba, he said: “We’re not going to turn our backs on our friends. We’re not going to pretend that we don’t have those relationships, but we’re going to work with all sides to ensure that whatever happens, the people of Cuba come out the better for this in the end.”
The foreign minister was speaking from the well of Parliament as the Estimates continued in the House of Assembly, responding to a question from MP Dwight Sutherland on whether the island would face challenges in maintaining its sovereign base and forming trade relationships with countries under sanctions, including Cuba.
Since 1962, an embargo preventing US businesses and citizens from conducting trade or commerce with Cuban interests has been in place. Cuba is now facing a growing humanitarian crisis due to an intensified fuel blockade by the United States from the beginning of this year.
Pointing to Barbados’ position within the United Nations, calling for the lifting of the sanctions, Sinckler highlighted CARICOM discussions last week during its summit with the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Sinckler said: “There’s a potential that changes are going to happen, and those changes, we don’t know what they’re going to be. We don’t know what they are, and we can’t presume to say what they are.
“What we can do, however, is to ensure that we continue to monitor the situation, maintain our position in relation to sanctions and other issues which have been affecting the Cuban state, express our solidarity with them, ensure that we work to ensure that no disaffected humanitarian crisis exists in the country for whatever reason, to contribute as nations in the CARICOM region to ensuring that we support ordinary citizens in Cuba to be able to survive and prepare ourselves to work for a solution that would be to the benefit of the people of Cuba. That’s where we have to be in this space.”
“This is not a game of chance. It is not a game. It’s a very serious thing.”
He stressed that the developments were being monitored closely to ensure that the relevant departments could make decisions based on real-time intelligence about what was happening with that country, “because there’s a saying which we use: today for me and tomorrow for you”.
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