Jamaica ministerial
By Rickey Singh
THE TWELFTH meeting of CARICOM’s Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR) gets underway in Kingston on Friday, with a special focus on initiatives to be pursued with foreign governments and international financial institutions in response to the prevailing global crisis.

According to informed sources, more effective coordination in foreign policy objectives will seek to avoid “cherry-picking approaches” at this critical period in dealing with the global community, while strenuously endeavouring to be guided by consensus, or moreso, unanimity.

Better treatment for the Caribbean in accessing funds from a recapitalised Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); review of diplomatic lobbying efforts in major capitals, as well as immediate follow-up actions with the United States and Canadian administrations are among matters for consideration.

These considerations will reflect foreign policy and economic development briefings that have reportedly followed last month’s bilateral meetings by CARICOM leaders, first with US President Barack Obama, and secondly Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Port-of-Spain during last month’s Fifth Summit of the Americas.

The region’s anxiety to secure a fair share of the proposed recapitalisation of the IDB that President Obama promised in Port of-Spain to make a “priority” issue of his administration in coming months, is one of the important issues for this week’s two-day meeting in the Jamaican capital.

Other issues that were also discussed in the bilateral talks with Obama, such as improved resources to combat narco-trafficking and gun-running, respect for legitimate off-shore financial services being provided by Caribbean jurisdictions, as well as continued lobbying for an end to the US 47-year-old economic blockade against Cuba, will be addressed a the two-day meeting.

The decisions and recommendations are to be forwarded by the CARICOM Secretariat to Heads of Government as part of preparations for their forthcoming regular annual summit meeting scheduled for the first week in July in Georgetown, Guyana.

Details of the leaders’ discussion with Obama on concerns to protect the legitimate interests of the region’s off-shore services sector remain undisclosed, as is also the case with respect to “security”.

But the Community Secretariat has reported that the US President “expressed appreciation” for the new perspectives put on the table, and conceded that they “merit another look”.

Perhaps that should be read to mean moving away from Washington’s originally-signalled steam-roller approach against so-called “tax havens”–at least as it relates to the Caribbean.

On ‘security”, which would have involved discussions pertaining to the Community’s ongoing problems in dealing with criminal deportees from the USA, CARICOM leaders are known not to be excited over President Obama’s announcement at the summit to make available US$30 million in the ongoing battle to curb illegal drugs and trafficking in small arms.

Compared to the emphasis placed and resources pledged for other jurisdictions in battling narco-trafficking (Mexico, for example), and bearing in mind the strategies often employed by drug lords to use the Caribbean as alternative transit routes to ship their dangerous cargo to the USA and Europe, the promised US$30 million aid for a Community comprising 15 independent states and various associated members is certainly a case of the proverbial drop in the bucket.

Contemplated for the Jamaica meeting is to encourage a more aggressive and concerted approach in foreign policy coordination that’s expected to involve better use of available diplomatic and economic expertise in engagement with foreign donor governments and institutions.

Among these will be maintaining a principled, sustained lobbying position for the UNCONDITIONAL end to the US-47-year-old economic blockade against Cuba.

This commitment, confirms–it was stressed, with the historic reality that CARICOM has been primarily instrumental in the successful campaign to end America’s cold war isolation of Cuba in this hemisphere and, therefore, cannot be expected to support any policy that still seeks to link an end to the economic embargo with Cuba’s domestic politics.