/IPS DEVELOPMENT BULLETIN/ CARIBBEAN: ACS Ministers Inaugurate New Era

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Dec 14 1996 (IPS) - The Second Ordinary Meeting of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) Council of Ministers, opened today in Cuba with talk of relaunching the regional forum.

Jose Angel Gurria, Mexico’s foreign minister and current Council President, said the meeting would aim to apply “modern and imaginative” formulae to give the ACS work programmes “a new direction.”

The Association will have to find openings for the regional nations the globalisation process which “we are all living through, whether we like it or not” said Gurria in his opening speech.

Representatives of the 25 member states of the group are meeting behind closed doors in Havana’s Conventions Palace Thursday and Friday, to analyse and approve the documents prepared by experts here earlier in the week.

The main proposals include a special cooperation fund, the creation of a sustainable tourist zone in the Caribbean, a protocol on ACS privileges and immunities and the constitution of a special tourism committee.

According to Gurria, the Council of Ministers will have to “define an issue to draw the members together and serve as a motor for the work” of the ACS in such a way that the Caribbean sea remains the common heritage of all the member States.

The ACS was created on July 14, 1994 in Cartagena, Colombia, and came into action during the first summit of heads of State and government in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, on August 17, 1995.

The group includes 25 full member sovereign States from the Caribbean, Central America and the Group of Three – Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela – along with 12 dependent territories, and Britain, France and the Netherlands as special members.

The member nations cover 5.23 million sq km, have 202 million inhabitants and a Gross Domestic Product of 508.39 billion dollars. In 1995, they imported goods worth 101.78 billion dollars and had exports of 80.883 billion.

“Everything which has been done with exclusions on this continent has failed and that’s why the ACS has to be a genuine effort for unity and integration,” said Cuba’s Foreign Minister, Roberto Robaina, representing the host country.

The ACS countries are heterogeneous from the cultural, legal and political point of view. Its members include independent and dependent nations, and even Cuba – the only Communist State in the Western hemisphere.

Sources within the Association said the Havana meeting must bring to an end the 16-month organisational phase, and take up the strategy for the development of tourism, trade and transport launched in Port of Spain.

According to the report presented by Simon Molina Duarte, Secretary-General of the Council of Ministers, the main priorities of the ACS include the identification of a common international agenda amongst the members.

Molina Duarte said the fundamental issues on the agenda were the preparation for hemisphere integration, the establishment of a hemisphere free trade zone, and negotiations with the European Union (EU).

The Council of Ministers will revise the year’s work, and must approve the plans of action presented by the special committees on trade and economic relations, environment, natural resources and science, technology, health, education, culture and sport.

The entity could also approve the incorporation of Spain, Italy, India, the Peoples Republic of China, Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina, along with six regional and subregional bodies as social protagonists.

Observers in Havana said tourism could become the main integration axis for the Caribbean Basin nations, which has the potential to be one of the most visited areas in the world.

The creation of a sustainable tourism zone appears to be one of the most urgent projects to come the meeting, which will be linked with a plan of action on transport aiming to massively improve connections between the regional nations.

According experts, the ACS will also have to overcome the governmental straightjacket in which it was formed, opening up to all sectors of civil society, especially the business community.

“It would be an unpardonable mistake to let the opportunity slip by,” said Robaina, it is only by being “united” that the Carribbean nations will be able to find a space in the ever more “globalised” world, he added.