(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) It is my honour to welcome you all to this Second Summit of the leaders of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the United States of Mexico.

CARICOM and Mexico have had a long and mutually beneficial relationship, with Mexico being the first country to form a Joint Commission with the Community, doing so just one year after the founding of CARICOM. The objective of that agreement signed in Kingston, Jamaica, on 30 July, 1974, was to identify and promote co-operation initiatives in order to enlarge economic, political and cultural relations. There is little doubt that it has been a success.

The two sides went further in 1990 by signing a technical co-operation agreement which identified transportation, language training, agriculture and agro-industrial development, maritime education, disaster preparedness and management, as well as climatology as the main thematic areas.

The programme of co-operation over the period has been characterized by the building of collaborative relations between CARICOM technical institutions and their counterparts in Mexico. For example, relations developed between the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) and CENAPRED the Mexican disaster preparedness and management agency, and between the Caribbean Meteorological Institute (CMI) and, the Mexican Institute for Water Technology.

The areas of co-operation have evolved such that by the Fifth Meeting of the Joint Commission in 2009 financial services, security, health, energy and climate change were incorporated. Further there is recognition that we have to collaborate in the face of the common challenges of citizen security, transnational crime and sustainable human development.

The Community welcomes the proposed sharing of the experiences of the Meso-American Project with our Member States particularly in two successful areas of the existing programmes. These refer to the Meso-American Territorial Information System which seeks to develop a regional co-ordination system for Natural Disaster Risk Reduction and the Meso-American Environmental Sustainability Strategy which develops projects in the areas of bio-diversity and forestry, climate change, green growth and sustainable competitiveness.

Heads of Government, Ministers, Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Caribbean Community is most appreciative of the assistance that Mexico has been providing to its Member State Haiti. Your recent visit to Haiti, Mr President, symbolises your country’s deep commitment to the revival and reconstruction of the country.

At the first CARICOM-Mexico Summit, which took place days after the catastrophic earthquake of 2010, both sides assumed the commitment of creating new measures to alleviate, in the medium and long term, the challenges that Haiti is facing.

The latest innovative initiative of Triangular Co-operation involving Mexico, CARICOM and Haiti offers much hope of fulfilling that commitment and achieving its objective of strengthening technical cooperation to benefit the people and government of Haiti. It was with great pleasure that I signed yesterday that Memorandum Of Understanding along with another on co-operation in Higher Education with the Foreign Minister of Mexico Her Excellency Patricia Espinosa.

Mr President, allow me, on behalf of the people and Governments of CARICOM, to extend deepest condolences to the family and the People of Mexico and Latin America on the passing of the great Mexican novelist, essayist and diplomat-Carlos Fuentes. We in the Caribbean Community salute his memory and share with Mexico the sorrow of his passing.

In closing I would like to thank the government and people of Barbados for their generosity and kind hospitality in hosting this Summit and its preparatory meetings and look forward to a productive and beneficial session.

I thank you.

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