PM says Antigua changed Cuba embargo vote due to ongoing visa talks with US

ST JOHN’S, Antigua, CMC – Prime Minister Gaston Browne says the Antigua and Barbuda government changed its intended support for a United Nations resolution concerning Cuba following a warning from the United States about the possible effect on ongoing negotiations regarding visas for nationals wanting to visit the North American country.

“In fact, I’ll make this public. We had decided to support Cuba on a resolution recently and changed our position because we had a call from the State Department advising us that they’re making progress in the negotiations and if we supported Cuba, that it would undermine the negotiations, so we changed our position,” Browne told listeners to his weekly radio programme.

“Our instructions to the ambassador in New York were to abstain. I noticed he did not show up, I don’t know what happened, but we changed our position because of certain things that were said and we’re still trying, but it’s not something we have any control over,” he added.

Of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries that were present at the October 28 debate, Jamaica, Haiti and Guyana abstained, while Trinidad and Tobago voted against.

The Bahamas, Belize, Barbados, Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Kitts and Nevis, and Suriname all voted in favour of the resolution, while Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica and St Lucia were marked as being absent when the vote was taken.

Trinidad’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has since doubled down on her government’s decision to support the United States trade and economic embargo against Cuba, saying, “We cannot want to live in light at home and remain silent when others live in the shadows of oppression and exploitation”.

Browne’s statement on the vote at the United Nations came as a female caller said she was unable to travel to the United States to be with her ailing mother because her current visa had expired and securing one remained difficult.

“I have said time and time again that there is no justification for it because, you know, we have had very good relations with the United States. We have never done anything to offend them, so up to this day, we’re not quite sure.”

Browne said he wondered whether the US position was being guided by the Citizenship by Investment Programme (CBI), through which foreign investors are granted citizenship of the island in return for making a substantial investment in the country’s socio-economic development.

“If it is that it’s a CBI that they have spoken about, well, we have just agreed to suspend and we wrote to the European Union, we told them that we’re ready to suspend, but we asked them to give us an additional three and a half years, we’re waiting to hear from them.

“So after the official suspension, which obviously is a phase-out over three and a half years, but an agreement to suspend from now, literally from November 12th, we will write to them again and let them know that we have formally suspended our programme because that’s the reason that they use.

“We have suspected it could be some other reason, what? We don’t know, and they’re not saying. They say that it’s our programme, unless they got misinformation and they acted on the misinformation, but you know, too big to accept that it made an error, I don’t know what it is.

“But we’re still working through the diplomatic lines to have this issue addressed,” Browne told his radio listeners, acknowledging that the current US visa situation with America “is a very difficult proposition, and the thing about it, this matter is now being dealt with at the State Department.

“It’s someone in the White House who has made a determination. I don’t know necessarily whether President Trump signed the order, that is necessarily he who is driving it himself. So that is what makes it so difficult,” said Browne.

“We have members within the State Department who are working feverishly,” he added.

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