National Security Minister Gary Griffith has knocked Opposition leader Dr Keith Rowley for statements Griffith says essentially opposed a global response to a global terrorist threat. During a political meeting in Pt Cumana on Sunday, Rowley suggested Trinis here and abroad were in increased danger as a result of T&T’s co-sponsorship of the United Nations Resolution on Isis.
Saying nothing could be further from the truth, Griffith, in a press release yesterday, said over 100 governments and their national security advisers took a similar stance on the global response to the Isis threat.
Against this united global response, Griffith queried whether if the PNM were in government it would adopt a stand alone position against global allies. Saying to pull out of the resolution would result in T&T being seen by the world as unprepared to prevent terrorism. Griffith said: "If you are not actively against terrorism then it may appear as if one supports and condones it by inaction and ill-advised opposition. "Among world leaders speaking on this issue, Barack Obama, President of the United States himself, said, 'No God condones this terror. No grievance justifies these actions. There can be no reasoning, no negotiation,with this brand of evil.
‘The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death.’” Rowley has said he is not against support of the resolution but rather the manner in which Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar publicly announced her support of it. He said that, in his view, the PM put the lives of Trinis locally and abroad at risk, since Isis has been known to target allies of the countries fighting against them and particlarly those linked to the United States.
He said terrorist threats had already infiltrated T&T’s shores since 199, when six nationals went to Libya and returned with a cache of terrorist-based intelligence and activity.
But by joining the league of nations opposed to terrorism in all its forms, T&T country had evolved in global diplomacy and was now a beneficiary to intelligence on an international scale, strengthening security and border protection, Griffith said.
"Isolationism is not an option in matters such as these and I again call on the Leader of the Opposition to desist from this path of sensationalising serious issues and to re-focus his energies on more important nation-developing issues in a more mature and responsible fashion,” Griffith said.
He added: "The Leader of the Opposition’s utterances continue to negatively affect our national security, as the constant reference to the issue, the heightened sense of sensationalism, attracts the wrong strains of attention, giving the impression that our nation can be perceived as a soft target, with little resolve to respond in a decisive, effective and swift manner against any terrorist threat."
He said no nation could adequately respond to terrorism by simply doing nothing and to make such statements showed a lack of understanding of matters of national and global security. (GK)