Gareth Thomas, minister of state for trade and development, United Kingdom. - Junior Dowie/Staff Photographer

A BRITISH government minister wants Jamaica and other Caribbean countries to stop discriminating against homosexuals.

Gareth Thomas, United Kingdom's minister of state for trade and development, made the call yesterday while discussing the impact of HIV/AIDS on Caribbean economies.

"That discrimination is undermining the fight against HIV," he charged at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston, noting that about 250,000 people across the region have been infected with the virus.

Thomas was speaking at the launch of the Department for International Development Caribbean Regional Development Strategy.

He called for regional govern-ments to challenge discrimination against gays.

Thomas said the Caribbean with the second-highest number of HIV/AIDS infections has been dealt an economic burden because of the prevalence of the virus.

In May, Prime Minister Bruce Golding, responding to questions on BBC's talk show 'HARDtalk', said he would not be pressured by outsiders to recognise homosexual rights.

Attitude changing

Pressed by the host of the show, Stephen Sackur, to declare whether gays would be included in his Cabinet, Golding said: "Sure they can be in the Cabinet - but not mine!"

Despite a strong resentment to homosexual lifestyle in Jamaica and the Caribbean, Grenadian sociologist Claude Douglas, in a recent interview with the Caribbean Media Corporation, argued that the region's attitude to homosexuality was changing.