(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) opened talks with the United Kingdom on Saturday morning IN Grenada with further calls for stronger partnerships to mitigate what it described as “the insidious global challenges confronting the Community.”

Co-Chair of the 7th UK-Caribbean Forum, the Honourable Sam Condor, Foreign Minister of St Kitts and Nevis and Chairman of CARICOM’s Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR) who delivered the first address at the opening plenary of the two-day Forum, singled out the ongoing economic crisis, epidemic of interpersonal violence, prolonged tightening of credit markets, less predictable relations between and among Nations, degradation of the environment and climate change as the debilitating forces that were eating away at the resilience of the Caribbean.

The St Kitts and Nevis Foreign Minister argued that those challenges were not unique to the Caribbean and emphasized that the actions of individuals and enterprises in one country ultimately threatened the livelihood in others. In this context therefore, he pointed to the need for mutual interdependency noting that “we are therefore responsible for and to each other; we are our brother’s keeper.”

“We must all be prepared to further deepen our engagement with Member States within the regional and international integration systems, and the International Financial Institutions. This is going to be critical to the provision of new opportunities; and the facilitation of greater access to the resources needed for implementing national policies and meeting International obligations,” he added.

Minister Condor mentioned several areas in which the Community was seeking greater cooperation and collaboration. These include crime and security, criminal deportation, unemployment and environment.

He emphasized further, that the two-day dialogue must of necessity reflect in real terms the gravity of the challenges that Caribbean Governments faced and that it must re-examine measures and policies imposed by development partners that exacerbate, rather than lighten the burden of other countries. One such inequity to which the Minister alluded is the Airline Passenger Duty (APD) imposed by the UK, which has made travel particularly to the Caribbean very expensive. Minister Condor stated bluntly that the tax was discriminatory against the Caribbean and ostensibly favored the United States. He added that the Region’s tourism sector was staggering under its weight and urged the UK to consider reforming the tax to level the playing field and provide a win-win situation for both the Caribbean and the UK.

The co-Chair of the UK-Caribbean Forum urged that both sides be open, frank and responsible in their deliberations as they sought to formulate plans and projects that would spawn the benefits that the peoples of both regions so desperately needed.

In concluding, Minister Condor thanked the UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague for his earlier commitment to re-invigorate the UK-Caribbean relationship, asserting that it was essential “at this time of unprecedented challenges.”

I am heartened by the stated determination of our “Co-chair … to re-invigorate the UK-Caribbean relationship; to bring about a new beginning as it were.”

“We have of course historically enjoyed a ‘special’ relationship between the UK and Caribbean, yielding much benefit,” the Co Chair concluded.

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