MINISTERS of Foreign Affairs of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) met with their Australian counterpart yesterday, the Honourable Stephen Smith, in preparation for a meeting on Saturday between their respective Heads of Government.

According to a statement from the CARICOM Secretariat, the meeting took place in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, where both parties are preparing for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) which begins in Port of Spain tomorrow.

The Chairman of the Community’s Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR), the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Jamaica Dr Kenneth Baugh said the timing of the meeting was right as the global nature of the issues with which the international community was confronted – climate change, pandemics for example – required global partnerships.

He noted that the Community was aware of Australia’s new and aggressive outreach, especially to small states. This outreach also coincided with CARICOM’s own efforts to reach out to new external partners, Dr Baugh said.

Minister Smith of Australia underlined the historic nature of the meeting as it was the first formal engagement between the two sides. It arose, he said, from the desire of his country to increase its international outreach in keeping with the broadened foreign policy orientation of the new government of Australia.

Australia is one of the countries whose Heads of Government will be meeting with CARICOM Leaders in the margins of the CHOGM. The others are the United Kingdom, South Africa and Canada.