Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Patrick Manning said Monday he does not expect a division within CARICOM after the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) denounced the final agreement reached at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen last week.

Three CARICOM countries - Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda - are members of ALBA.

"What has emerged out of those deliberations is that CARICOM takes precedence over all other political, economic and other arrangements in the region and therefore it is the CARICOM position that is likely to prevail in respect of the CARICOM countries that are part of ALBA rather than the position articulated by any other grouping," said Manning.

"CARICOM is not a fly-by-night arrangement, it is one of the longest integration movements in the world, those of whom subscribe to it take it very seriously and it has worked in the past in so many ways, and we don't see CARICOM and CARICOM unity being threatened as a consequence of that development."

Chavez critical

The 'Copenhagen Accord' was pushed by the United States and Australia, and sealed in meetings behind closed doors with the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa. The non-binding agreement was announced by US president Barack Obama late on the evening of December 18.

But the ALBA countries have denounced the accord with Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez accusing President Obama of behaving like an emperor "who comes in during the middle of the night and cooks up a document that we will not accept, we will never accept."

ALBA countries contend that the agreement reached in Copenhagen does not commit governments to interim 2020 carbon emissions-reduction targets, or to legally binding reductions and only expresses a general aim of limiting the global warming increase to two degrees Celsius, well above the 1.5 degree Celsius target demanded by most countries including the Alliance for Small Island Developing States (AOSIS).

Manning told a news conference that he expects the agreement to hold, telling reporters: "It is a complex matter; it is no way simple".

He said that Trinidad "agrees with the accord," adding "we have to be realistic."

The accord confirms the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Developed countries have also committed collectively to provide US$30 billion in new, additional funding for developing countries for the 2010-2012 period. It also says developed countries support "a goal of mobilising jointly US$100 billion a year" by 2020 from a variety of sources.

Manning told reporters that Port of Spain, which is classified as an industrialised country with a number of ammonia plants and power stations, had been successful in ensuring that it would not, as a developing country, have to contribute to the fund.

Energy plants in Trinidad use natural gas and while, said Manning, "we have a footprint that is large on a per capita basis", the twin-island state was not one of the "major transgressors" of carbon emission.

- CMC