Visit by Delcy Rodriguez 20200525
(Government’s Failure to Account) (cont’d)
UNREVISED
The Minister of Foreign and Caricom Affairs (Sen. The Hon. Dennis Moses): Thank you very much, Madam President. I have very little doubt, and I have all confidence, in that persons who would have intently listened to what was just said, would come to the conclusion that it has all to do with—has very little to do with the truth, but all to do with, perhaps, fishing.
Madam President, Trinidad and Tobago became an independent sovereign nation on the 31st of August, 1962, and thereafter, assumed control of its foreign policy. Less than one month later, Trinidad and Tobago was admitted to the United Nations on the 18th of September of 1962. Membership of other bodies followed. Trinidad and Tobago signed the Charter of the Organization of American States on the 13th of March in 1965, ratified the Charter on the 14th of March of the said year and deposited instruments of ratification on the 17th of March of 1967.
Trinidad and Tobago is a signatory to the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, otherwise known as TIAR, or the Rio Treaty. Trinidad and Tobago signed the Treaty on the 6th of April in 1967 and ratified it on the 2nd of June and deposited it on the 12th of June of 1967. As part of the Treaty, the high contracting parties agreed that an attack by any State against an American State shall be considered as an attack against all the American States and, consequently, each one of the said contracting parties undertakes to assist in meeting the attack in the exercise of their inherent right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. Self-defence, collective defence, notably should a member state come under military attack from another state and the need for a request from that state, the state or states directly attacked are central tenets of the Treaty.
Madam President, consistently over the years, Trinidad and Tobago has maintained a foreign policy anchored on multilateralism, non-interference and non-
