Annual CARICOM summit opens in Grenada

Tuesday, July 6, 2004

ST GEORGE‘S, Grenada: The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) opened its annual summit in Grenada Sunday with a discussion of the restoration of ties with the interim government of Haiti.

The support to the Haitian interim government was withheld by the Caribbean leaders during their last summit in May due to concerns over the ouster of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who left the country in February.

Several leaders in the region have expressed the wish to move forward over the issue.

Haitian Foreign Minister Yvon Simeon, leading a delegation of three members, attended the meeting. However, the absence of Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue as well as the Haitian flag from a presentation of member state flags during an opening ceremony did not go unnoticed.

Haiti was the last nation to formally join CARICOM in 2002. Its eight-million population is greater than all the remaining 14 member states combined.

In a speech at the opening session, Jamaican Prime Minister Percival Patterson said the whole world is waiting for the community to make right decision over the issue.

"The world is watching... The people of Haiti are waiting on us as we make our decision here," he said.

''As we seek to chart the way forward, let us not leave behind the fundamental principles which are our compass,'' Patterson told the gathering. “We need to be assured that there be no sacrifice of the rights of all citizens in this, our CARICOM family, to exercise their own democratic option and to be able to secure the due protection of law. Whatever we decide, we must continue to assist in the economic and social well-being of that long-beleaguered nation.''

He said CARICOM was continuing to promote Haiti's case for substantial financial resources from the World Bank, the European Union and other international development agencies.

In his opening remarks to the meeting, incoming Chairman of CARICOM, Keith Mitchell, Prime Minister of Grenada said that CARICOM needs to offer Haiti a package of support similar to the assistance, patience and sympathetic support received by Grenada to facilitate its return to democracy.

“While CARICOM has taken a very principled approach with respect to recent events in Haiti, I believe that the time has come to engage Haiti even more on the way forward for advancing democracy and development for the Haitian people. The Haitian people need their Caribbean brothers and sisters now!” Mitchell continued.

The prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Patrick Manning, told the BBC that Haiti should be "properly integrated" again and has urged CARICOM to recognise the new US-backed government of Gerard Latortue.

Manning told the BBC's Caribbean service his fellow leaders were all "equally committed" to adopting a new position on Haiti.

"We believe the time has come for Haiti to be properly integrated into the regional integration movement," he said.

"What has happened in the past we consider very unfortunate, we don't like it at all.

"However, we think the time has come to move on."

At the four-day summit, CARICOM will discuss other issues such as the struggling sugar industry, progress in establishing a European-style single market and a regional court to replace Britain's Privy Council.

CARICOM Secretary General Edwin Carrington touched on some of the challenges the region faces.

“For example, decisive and sustained regional action is required if we are to deal successfully with the growing problem of HIV/AIDS and its devastating impact on Caribbean social life and our human and economic resources.''

Outgoing Chairman, Baldwin Spencer, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, took the United Kingdom and the United States to task over the “threat to our societies of the alarming influx of seasoned criminals deported from the United States and the United Kingdom.''

''Some of those deportees have spent virtual lifetimes in the exporting countries,'' Spencer said. “Now… they are being deposited in societies in which they have only the most tenuous family connections, if any at all.''

The summit continues through Wednesday and the meeting is due to vote on whether to re-admit Haiti on Tuesday.

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