Press release 76/20001
(21 May 2001)

His Excellency Mr. Samuel A. Hinds, Acting President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana
Honourable Ministers of Foreign Affairs and their delegations
Other Honourable Ministers
Your Excellencies, Ambassadors, High Commissioners and other representatives of the Diplomatic Corps
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Media
Colleagues

I have the honour and the pleasure to welcome you all to this the Fourth Meeting of the Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR). The Government of Guyana, as incoming Chair of the COFCOR, is our kind host for this Meeting and for this, we sincerely thank them. In this regard, it is a most pleasant task this morning to extend a specially warm welcome to the newly appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs of Guyana, the Hon. Samuel Rudolph Insanally, who has only within the hour officially assumed office. It is a most happy augury, Hon. Minister, that your first act as Minister, is to assume the Chairmanship of this prestigious and vital Organ of the Caribbean Community.

Mr. Minister, your skills as a diplomat par excellence, are universally known. In the execution of your tasks as Ambassador to the European Community and elsewhere, and latterly as Permanent Representative of Guyana to the United Nations during which you served as President of the United Nations General Assembly with such consummate skill, have brought great recognition and high praise, not only to Guyana, but to the Caribbean region as a whole. We welcome you to COFCOR Hon. Minister, and look forward to your equally able chairmanship of this Council.

According to the information made available to me, the Honourable Elvin Nimrod of Grenada is participating in the Ordinary Meeting of the COFCOR for the first time. I extend a warm welcome to you as well Minister.

Hon. Ministers, the theme of this Fourth Meeting of the COFCOR can justifiably be said to be "a review and revision of the Community's foreign policy strategy". So much has happened over the past two-to-three years, and is in fact happening daily, that, as a Region, we need to stop and ask ourselves a number of searching questions:

How are we perceived by the international community?

Are we conducting our business to the maximum advantage of the people of the Region and in as efficient a manner as we ought to, given our very limited resources?

Are we aware of who are our true friends and genuine strategic allies?

How are they demonstrating this relationship and how are we fostering or promoting it?

Are we building relationships with an eye to the future rather than a remembrance of the past?

Are we utilising the many new developments in technology to support the foreign policy strategies of our Region?

These are but a few of the hard questions we need to ask and answer as we review and revise our foreign policy strategy.

As Ministers with the responsibility for advancing our Region's foreign policy, you will also need to engage in frank and candid discussions about the foreign policy implications of the integration of CARICOM Countries as small states, into the global economy. This is indispensable if you are to partner and complement the substantive discussions on trade and economic issues which are taking place on an ongoing basis by your colleague Ministers in the COTED and COFAP. In this regard, it is important, for example, that COFCOR explore the political ramifications of certain aspects of the upcoming Free Trade Area of the Americas, in particular, its non-economic conditionalities such as the call for a democracy clause; the issue of good governance and transparency; the implications of the exclusion of Cuba; and the resulting implications for the direction of the Community's evolving foreign policy strategy.

Equally, the new relationships which are likely to be developed between the European Union and the ACP countries, including the CARIFORUM countries, will almost certainly bring in their wake changes in the political sphere. COFCOR cannot afford to ignore these prospects, nor can it be distant from the negotiating positions being developed by the Regional Negotiating Machinery.

Of the many regions of the world to which our foreign policy must give priority, none however, holds more relevance and importance to us than this hemisphere and the countries comprising it. In this context, our particular historically friendly relationship with Canada seem set to be strengthened. In addition to having fully supported its Chairmanship of the Third Summit of the Americas, we are now proceeding in a joint search for an enhanced trading relationship between us, which will reflect more, our development priorities and replace the earlier one that was essentially developed on the initiative of Canada.

The exchange between a representative team of our Foreign Ministers and the US Secretary of State and the US National Security Adviser at the end of March, has made it clear that the Region must determine its response to the new Third Border Initiative announced by the new US President and his administration. This however, must be done without losing our focus on ensuring that the new US Administration remains committed to the effective functioning of the structures established under the Bridgetown Accord.

And what of our partners in the Association of Caribbean States as we seek to strengthen the Caribbean as a Zone of Cooperation? Are we doing enough to support this effort? Only last Thursday, the Heads of the Regional Organisations of the Member States of this Association met in Port-of-Spain to map out a path for their future cooperation. Only ten days ago, I had the honour to receive credentials of the new Venezuelan Ambassador to the Caribbean Community. His country will of course be hosting the ACS Heads of Government in December at the Third Summit of the Association. Are we satisfied that we are maximising the advantage which this arrangement makes possible?

And what about our relations with that South American giant and neighbour of ours - Brazil? On Saturday, our senior foreign affairs officials were treated to an eye-opener of a lecture on Brazil by Dr. Carlos Moore, Senior Lecturer at the UWI Institute of International Relations, and UWI Adviser on Brazil. The scope for cooperation seem almost as wide as the country is large. How are we going to embrace it?

Joint Commissions or similar arrangements exist between CARICOM and a number of other countries including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. We must use these mechanisms to effectively promote the well-being of our peoples as we seek to develop closer relations with these countries. In this process, COFCOR must lead the way.

Further afield, following your highly successful visit to Japan last November, we must do everything possible to ensure that the follow-up matches the opportunities which your visit so clearly identified. We must as well seek to develop and strengthen relations with selected African countries and with India.

How can we grapple with this mammoth task, while not ignoring the pursuit at home in our own Community relations, of those vital principles such as: good governance, respect for human rights and adherence to our democratic values, all of which remain essential norms for participation in our integration movement and a sine qua non for good relations among our Member States.

It is in pursuit of the observance of these values that over the past year, CARICOM mounted electoral missions to Haiti, Guyana, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and held the Third Meeting of the Assembly of Caribbean Community Parliamentarians in Belize City.

We are now committed to negotiating an Inter-American Democratic Charter during the next meeting of the OAS General Assembly to be held in just over a week's time in Costa Rica. Having already adopted our own Charter of Civil Society, CARICOM countries have a base for considering the issues which are fundamental to the development of such a Charter.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope that these few words have served to draw to your attention, the tremendous responsibility which falls to this Council. I have no doubt, however, that herculean as it is, this Body will rise to the task. At the end of this meeting, Ministers will issue a Communique. That document will set out the major decisions taken at this meeting. In this way Ministers will strive to educate our people on the importance of coordination of our foreign policies, on the substance of that process and on what we, as a Caribbean people can hope to gain from it.

Some of those gains will no doubt be reflected in the remarks to be delivered by the outgoing Chairman of COFCOR, the Honourable Minister of Enterprise Development, Foreign Affairs and Tourism of Trinidad and Tobago, the Honourable Mervyn Assam, to whom I now have great pleasure to extend an invitation to address this Opening Ceremony.

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