CURRENT Chair of the Regional Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR), Guyana Foreign Affairs Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett called Tuesday for Members and non-Member States to deepen relations.

Speaking at the 17th meeting of COFCOR, in the Guyana International Conference Centre, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, she urged colleague Ministers to recognise the potential for strengthening ties in the interest of the Region’s development as a whole.
“We must encourage more functional cooperation and look inwards to develop synergies,” she suggested, adding that: “Guyana and Barbados resuscitated their Joint Commission Mechanism and, last October, my Colleague Minister McLean and I had very substantial discussions here, which led to agreement for cooperation in several areas including tourism, an industry in which Barbados has a wealth of experience and one which Guyana is trying to grow.”
Continuing, she said:“Guyana is also collaborating with Suriname in several areas and with Trinidad and Tobago. We now have students from St.Vincent and the Grenadines at the Guyana School of Agriculture and, very soon, we are expected to have some from Belize.”
Mutual benefit
The COFCOR Chair added that countries with shared interests must take advantage of each other’s strengths for the mutual benefit of their peoples.
“This can only lead to a more integrated Region with a renewed confidence of our people in its relevance and worth,” she said.
According to her, regional leaders have been tasked by their respective Heads of Government to address the issue of joint diplomatic representation, an issue that had once been perennial on the agenda of the Caribbean Community (Caricom).
“It is an agenda that we must now, again, confront with renewed fervour. If developed countries, with much more human and financial resources than we have, can pursue with each other shared space of diplomatic premises or, as in the case of the Pacific Alliance countries, establish measures in the area of consular assistance to benefit their nationals, then our small community of nations must recognise the merit of adopting either these or similar options and, of course, we will be examining this in detail,” Rodrigues-Birkett said.
On COFCOR’s progranme this year is the CARICOM-Canada Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiation and regional positions on several matters impacting multilateral relations, including the United Nations post 2015 development agenda and the third international conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) later in 2014.
Written By Vanessa Narine