00:00Barbados Prime Minister Mia Motley denounced the rising threat of the United States military deployment in the Caribbean region.
00:07Our correspondent Crystal Hoyt with the details.
00:10The arrival of the USS Gravely at Trinidad and Tobago's port this morning has heightened concerns across the Caribbean,
00:18with Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amour Motley warning against what she called menacing military vessels in regional waters.
00:26Speaking at the Barbados Liberal Party's 86th annual conference on Saturday night,
00:32Prime Minister Motley called for urgent dialogue to prevent the situation from escalating into conflict.
00:38If ever we needed a reminder of how unstable and how dangerous this world that we live in is,
00:46and how vulnerable our Caribbean region is, it is now with us facing a multiplicity of threats.
00:55We don't need to look any further than in menacing vessels, military vessels from the United States across the Caribbean Sea,
01:05including what is reputed to be the world's largest warship.
01:11The violent actions that this build-up has led to needs to be the subject of dialogue.
01:18And I have said before, almost every war in the world in history has been ended by dialogue.
01:24So let us have dialogue to stop the war, to prevent the war from starting, rather than to stop it when it has started.
01:34The USS Gravely's deployment follows weeks of increasing U.S. naval movements in the region.
01:41Motley cautioned against conflating law enforcement operations with military action,
01:46describing such steps as dangerous, and said no Caribbean nation should be subjected to unilateral use of force.
01:55Her remarks come as the region also faces another major threat, Hurricane Melissa,
02:00which is bearing down on the Northern Caribbean.
02:04Motley expressed solidarity with Jamaica and other nations in the storm's path,
02:08calling this moment a multiplicity of threats for small island states.
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