By Damion Mitchell, Staff ReporterNATIONAL SECURITY Minister, Dr. Peter Phillips, left the island yesterday as head of a Jamaican security delegation to the fourth United Kingdom Caribbean Forum in Edinburgh, Scotland, being held from May 10 -12.
K. D. Knight, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and a team from that Ministry are also expected to attend.
Dr. Phillips will be meeting with Scotland Yard officials and with Bill Rammel, the UK's Parliamen-tary Under-secretary in the Commonwealth and Foreign Affairs Office to continue security talks pertaining to Jamaica and Britain.
"The UK has already expressed a strong interest in the (security) issues (affecting Jamaica) and have given an indication of support and so coming out of this forum, we could very well see a concretisation of this expression that may even be translated into something practical," Gilbert Scott, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of National Security, who along with Police Commissioner Francis Forbes completes the delegation, told The Sunday Gleaner yesterday.
He said also that Commissioner Forbes, who was appointed to head a co-ordinating information management authority would be presenting, at the forum, an update on the creation of the Regional Information and Intelligence Sharing Network (RIISN), a UK-backed initiative expected to become fully operational by the end of the year.
The network, announced in March by Dr. Phillips, the chairman of CARICOM's Ministerial Sub-committee for Resource Mobilisation for Crime and Security, will tackle drug trafficking and other serious external threats to Caribbean countries.
It is also expected to assist Jamaica and other Caribbean countries to develop tactical and strategic intelligence-gathering capabilities.
According to Mr. Scott, while there have been some successes in the strategies locally against crime, "We still maintain a concern about the illegal trading of narcotics and the way it fuels the trading of guns and ammunitions."
