In the 90's, Greater Caribbean Integration was dealt severe blows when the "Banana Wars" and talks regarding a future, though ill fated (in retrospect) "Free Trade Area of the Americas" (FTAA) drew our gaze towards far-off shores, leaving a hole in the budding integration movement inspired by the Report of the West Indian Commission ironically titled (20/20 hindsight again): TIME FOR ACTION.

Subsequent reactions weakened the concept of comprehensive regional integration beyond tariff talks and later, as the FTAA talks began to collapse in the wake of regional political realignment, centripetal forces drew almost all our efforts towards the attainment of bilateral deals of three basic types:

• Agreements between individual developing and developed States;
• Agreements between groups of developing States and individual world powers and;
• Agreements between integration mechanisms of the developed and developing States.

Fortunately, this trend has been tempered by the healthy realisation that trade liberalization alone, particularly for a region with such varying sizes and levels of economic development, is unsustainable in the absence of cooperation and coordination in foreign policies, political harmonization and socio-economic development.

That there is any life left in Greater Caribbean integration is a testament to the enlightened stubbornness of some leaders who recognise that comprehensive integration is the key to the economic and social development strategies of the countries of the region. This concept takes into account other themes of our integration (transport, natural disasters, sustainable tourism and non-tariff trade issues) which are sine qua non requirements for the sustainable development of at least 28 States and territories existing in a sea that can be either moat or bridge.

In the post colonial era, Greater Caribbean States and territories have, to varying degrees, benefited in the short and medium terms from their different relationships with erstwhile metropolis. Today, the long range view reveals that this is no longer a viable option, particularly as the expansion of the European Union to include ten new members from the East now puts our special friends in Europe in the minority, at a time when the EU will have to look ever inward in order to absorb the new countries.

As is often the case, events towards year's end, more than marking the end of the old an era, tend to herald the beginning of the new. On 16th November, an appeal was set in motion at the WTO against the EU's preferential access to bananas from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. The move comes on the heels of the statement by Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Caribbean Investment Summit on 2nd November to the effect that European trade preferences for the Caribbean can only decrease and, eventually, disappear. At the same event, Barbadian Prime Minister Owen Arthur said: "The crushing reality is that persistent demands for protectionism and permanent non-reciprocity for the Caribbean will ... be treated either with polite bemusement but indifference by some or with outright opposition"

To be sure, a dissertation on countries' sovereign right to get the sweetest deal possible on bread-and-butter issues is not worth The Guardian's fine ink. However, taking a cue from Marx' admonition about history repeating itself (first as tragedy, then as farce), care should be taken to prevent this single issue from once again polluting the Greater Caribbean's integration agenda as a whole, particularly now that both we and our institutions (especially the ACS and CARICOM) are more mature.

Luis Carpio is the Director of Transport and Natural Disasters of the Association of Caribbean States. The views expressed are not necessarily the official views of the ACS. Feedback can be sent to: mail@acs-aec.org