SINCE
the Caribbean Community has fared comparatively poorly
under the George W Bush administration, with which
it has had some sharp disagreements on policies and
programmes, the hope is that the coming meeting between
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and our foreign
ministers could result in a breakthrough in new partnership
relations.
Rickey Singh
The meeting is scheduled for Nassau
on March 21-22 and will be hosted by current chairman
of the Community's Council for Foreign Relations,
Bahamas' Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell.
Top officials of the US State Department
and Caricom's Washington-based ambassadors are currently
engaged in a series of meetings, in consultation with
their respective governments, to help shape the draft
work agenda.
Slated for discussons are co-operation
in law enforcement, with emphasis on battling drug-related
crime and violence; the related issue of criminal
deportees being dumped by US authorities on Caribbean
states of their birth, and terrorism are.
The Caricom ministers also have an
interest in discussing the implications for West Indian
nationals in the USA who may be affected by current
efforts of American lawmakers to widen the net against
undocumented immigrants.
It has been some four years since
a scheduled meeting of Caricom foreign ministers and
a US secretary of state took place. The last occasion
was with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, also
in The Bahamas. It lasted for half-a-day, with tempers
flaring on issues that also involved the region's
dignity and sovereignty.
RICE. has embraced the idea to regularise structured
meetings with the foreign ministers of Caricom and
the Dominican Republic
Condoleezza Rice may be quite preoccupied
at this time with challenges to win friends and influence
governments on lingering fierce controversies over
America's policies in the Middle East, gross violations
of basic rights of political prisoners at US 'war'
detention centres, as well as her government's inordinate
pressures to have its own way at the United Nations.
But from a Caribbean perspective,
it is encouraging to note that for all the hawkish
positions with which she has been identified while
Colin Powell served as US secretary of state, Rice
has embraced the idea to regularise structured meetings,
at least once annually, with the foreign ministers
of Caricom and the Dominican Republic.
Having met on the margins of last
year's annual conference of the Organisation of American
States in Florida and, subsequently, during the UN
General Assembly in New York, the US secretary of
state and Caricom's foreign ministers will now have
their first full, official meeting, with a mutually
agreed agenda in The Bahamas.
It will have to be more than a public
relations exercise, with our Caribbean region, though
small and poor, recognised as a vital bridge between
the two Americas.
The idea for scheduled ministerials
is located in the spirit and letter of the Bridgetown
Accord, signed between Caricom heads of government
and President Bill Clinton during his historic visit
to Barbados in May 1997. It sets out procedures for
follow-up actions involving technical and decision-making
officials.
Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright was supposed to advance the process. Powell,
her successor under the first George W Bush administration,
was at first keen on fostering good relations with
the Caribbean, a region with which he has Jamaican
roots. However, for various reasons, he lost his enthusiasm.
One of the challenges he encountered
was opposition by a number of Caricom states to the
Bush administration's decision to cut off aid to countries
that refuse to enter into an agreement with Washington
not to extradite from their shores American nationals
who may be wanted for crimes by the International
Criminal Court (ICC).
Now enters Rice for her tango with
Caricom foreign ministers. She is not known for her
warmth towards this region, and could hardly be amused
by the expanding tilt in Latin America towards left-wing
governments.
Plus, of course, Caricom's own special
relationship with Fidel Castro's Cuba and reluctance
to join the chorus in Washington to condemn the Venezuelan
government of President Hugo Chavez, with which the
overwhelming number of Community states have entered
into the Caracas-initiated PetroCaribe project to
provide fuel on concessional terms and related economic
assistance..
It is not clear to what extent the
Bush administration is really interested in pursuing
programmes outlined in the Barbados Accord. But since
the half-day meeting in The Bahamas between Caricom
foreign ministers and Powell, two developments of
significance to the Community have taken place:
First, Washington's reaffirmation
in January 2004 of President Bush's so-called Third
Border Initiative (TBI), that was to inspire optimism
for new US assistance to the Caribbean in a range
of areas.
These include health and education; disaster preparedness
and mitigation; civil aviation and law enforcement
co-operation in the fight against narco-trafficking,
money laundering and anti-corruption training.
Regrettably, much is yet to be realised.
Rice can therefore expect to be asked for clarity
and reassurances on the TBI, which happens to follow
other earlier initiatives by Washington administrations,
for instance, President Ronald Reagan's Caribbean
Basin Initiative of the 1980s, partly to counter communist
influence; and the Partnership for Prosperity and
Security in the Caribbean signed as the Bridgetown
Accord in 1997 by President Clinton and leaders of
Caricom and the Dominican Republic.
The second relevant development -
US political/military involvement in Haiti in February
2004 - was to prove a disaster in Washington's relations
with Caricom.
The Community's heads of government
felt their peace plan - discussed with and agreed
upon with the Bush administration - for a resolution
to the prevailing crisis while President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide was still in office, had been unilaterally
dumped, without prior notice, in preference for a
hasty military intervention that coincided with the
downfall of an elected government..
Now, while we await the inauguration
of President-elect Rene Preval, do not expect Haiti's
representation at the coming ministerial in Nassau,
in view of ongoing problems to elect a new Parliament
and with a caretaker government in limbo in Port-au-Prince.
However, given the strong and principled
stand taken by Caricom leaders at their 2005 summit
when dealing with terrorism, it seems reasonable to
expect that our foreign ministers would seek to raise
the issue of the Cuban emigré, Luis Posada
Carriles. He was clearly implicated in the bombing
of a Cuban aircraft in 1976 off Barbados, and is currently
being sheltered in the USA.
In recalling that horrendous tragedy
in which all 73 people on board the commercial flight
perished, the 2005 Caricom Summit communiqué
called for Posada and all "perpetrators of this
act of terrorism to be brought to justice, and so
bring closure to this egregious incident which caused
so much pain to the people of this region".
Our Caricom heads of government and
their foreign ministers will do well - perhaps Condoleezza
Rice as well - to spend a little of their time digesting
what former US President Jimmy Carter has written
on "the distortion of American foreign policy"
under the Bush administration, and also his warning
as to why Washington should not confuse its "war
on terrorism" with attacks on fundamental human
rights - at home and abroad.
Those analyses and more are to be
found in Carter's latest book, Our Endangered Values
(America's Moral Crisis), which I partly reviewed
in this column last February 12.
For now, we await the outcome of the
coming diplomatic dance between Rice and Caricom's
foreign ministers.
Rickey Singh
is well known Caribbean Journalist, his articles are
carry by many caribbean Newspapers.Petroleumworld
not necessarily share these views.
