NEWLY appointed Opposition spokesman on Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Edmund Bartlett, says that meeting Trinidad and Tobago’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Winston Dookeran, last week, has convinced him that the bilateral trade issues can be resolved through dialogue.

“He is a very learned man, articulate in foreign diplomacy, and we have a common appreciation of the need for a new architecture in the regional integration movement,'” Bartlett told Caribbean Business Report on Wednesday, after the weekly meeting of Parliament’s Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC), which he chairs.

Barlett said that, like Dookeran, he believes that Caribbean economic integration is a critical plank for deeper relationship between the two countries he sees as most critical to the survival of CARICOM.

He said that he discussed with Dookeran at his office in Port-of-Spain, issues relating to the trade imbalance between both countries; broadening the Caribbean economic space to include non-anglophone countries in the region; as well as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the implications for relationships between the region and the United States and Canada.

Bartlett and Opposition spokesman on Finance and Planning, Audley Shaw, both returned home from Port-of-Spain last week-end, after attending the two-day ParlAmericas Workshop 07, which took place February 5-6, at the Hilton Trinidad & Conference Centre.

ParlAmericas, a forum for parliamentarians in the hemisphere, hosted the capacity-building workshop with the theme, ‘Strengthening Parliamentary Budget Oversight in the Caribbean – Phase 2’, to provide a space for oversight parliamentarians and auditors general to increase their regional knowledge and share best practices.

Prior to leaving for Trinidad and Tobago last week, Bartlett paid a courtesy call on Trinidad and Tobago’s High Commissioner in Kingston, Dr. Iva Camille Gloudon.