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Central American nations trying to unite |
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July 4, 2000
CANOUAN, St. Vincent (AP) - With the global economy beginning to squeeze out Caribbean nations, the region's leaders were supposed to concentrate this week on jump-starting a decades-old effort to unite their economies. But the region's divisiveness is again stealing the show.
A long-standing feud between Guyana and Suriname over resources along their border has exploded. And the 15-member Caribbean Community is being asked to step in during its summit on Canouan, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
"The pace is slower than it should have been," Secretary-General Edwin Carrington said of regional unity before the conference opened Sunday. "Some people do not realize how urgent this is."
In recent weeks, rich countries have branded a string of Caribbean offshore banking industries as money-laundering centers, threatening sanctions against what many tiny island nations see as one of the few ways out of poverty in a globalized world.
Caribbean countries have watched, stunned and powerless, as their textile and other factories shut down and moved to Mexico after it became a partner to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Then the United States won a ruling by the World Trade Organization against Europe's trade preference for Caribbean banana producers.
But one of the first orders of business will be resolving a dispute between Suriname and Guyana over a Canadian oil rig that was operating under a concession granted by Guyana. Suriname, Guyana's neighbor on the northern coast of South America, claims the rig crossed into Surinamese waters and ordered it to move on June 3.
Officials from both countries vowed to try to settle the matter between themselves, but their third round of talks broke down two weeks ago. The Caribbean Community, known as Caricom, is trying to smooth things over.
"We can ill afford incidents that will divert us from developing our resources," Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo said as the summit opened.
Peacemaking is becoming a familiar role for Caricom. It brokered a peace agreement in Guyana after disputed elections led to race riots in 1998 and helped heal a trade dispute between Trinidad and Jamaica last year.
The elections crisis in the Caricom's newest member, Haiti, will also be discussed. The Organization of American States has criticized the vote-counting process following the May polls, and on Sunday, OAS secretary general Cesar Gaviria talked privately with Haitian President Rene Preval at the summit. Details of their discussion were not released.
With so many internal problems, Caribbean leaders fret that they have made little progress toward their original goal of forging a common market.
All the leaders agree that a common market would help the region. In 1992, Caricom amended the treaty that created it to include a single market similar to that of the European Union. But getting countries to agree and change laws and constitutions has been difficult.
"We can't afford not to have (a single market)," Carrington lamented. "It's costing us a lot each day."
A major drawback is the diversity of islands such as oil-rich Trinidad, the banana-dependent Windward Islands such as St. Vincent and desperately poor Haiti.
Caricom leaders are also trying to build ties with Cuba and will sign a trade agreement with the island this week, outgoing chairman Denzil Douglas said.
Also on the agenda, yet again, are plans to set up a Caribbean supreme court to replace the faraway Privy Council in London.
The court was expected to operate this year among members Guyana, Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad, but has been delayed while Caricom seeks ways to guarantee that it will be financially independent and apolitical, Carrington said.
Other Caricom members are Antigua and Barbuda, St. Lucia, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Montserrat, Dominica and Belize.
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