JAGDEO

WASHINGTON, (CMC):

Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders yesterday entered a one-day summit with United States President George W. Bush, hoping to get firm commitments of support to help them deal with pressing security and economic development issues.

"If we can get very specific commitments in these two broad areas, I would say the summit would be a success, if not, I would think it was another conference, many of which I have attended, with very little results," Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo told the Caribbean Media Corporation ahead of the talks, which come exactly 10 years after the Bill Clinton summit with Caribbean leaders in Barbados in 1997.

Dominica's Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said he was also hoping for a more positive outcome to the latest talks, which come against the backdrop of efforts to create a CARICOM Single Market and Economy.

Development fund

One of the key aspects of the arrangement will be a regional development fund to assist vulnerable member states.

Skerrit pointed out that "Unless we (CARICOM) can get the commitment of our international partners, including the United States, to assist us in capitalising the Regional Development Fund (RDF), it is going to be difficult for us to do it."

On the question of security, President Jagdeo argued that financial support was urgently needed, not onlyto fight terrorism but also to combat drug trafficking.

"We spend more proportionally in relation to our GDP than the United States of America on drug trafficking and we get lectures about not doing enough, yet most of the drugs come into the U.S., so they have a greater law enforcement failure," he said.

Jagdeo also suggested that the matter was one of "fairness", and that the United States had a moral obligation to render such assistance to the Caribbean since, as he sees it, many of the Caribbean's security woes start and end with the U.S.