By IPS Correspondents
GEORGETOWN, Aug 27 2001 (IPS)

Eastern Caribbean states are reaching out to oil-rich Libya to compensate for dwindling U.S. and Western aid. For the tiny spice island of Grenada, the initiative has special significance.

Almost twenty years ago, Grenada’s leftist People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) defied the advice of the clergy and other regional governments, and warnings from the United States about a political backlash, and sent a delegation to the Libyan capital to seek aid.

Although by no definition a left-winger, Grenada Prime Minister Keith Mitchell is now front and centre in talks with the Libyans and his counterparts Pierre Charles of Dominica and Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and the Grenadines. They began discussions in Tripoli Sunday with Libyan Prime Minister Mubarak al-Shamikh and Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam, on ways to strengthen economic ties between their countries.

Prime Ministers Denzil Douglas of St Kitts and Nevis and Lester Bird of Antigua pulled out of the trip, with Douglas citing pressing commitments at home and Bird saying Antigua had no diplomatic relations with Tripoli. Instead, they sent lower-level delegates.

Grenada’s last approach to Libya was during the Cold War between the then Soviet Union and the United States, when Washington viewed the Caribbean as part of its hemispheric ‘back yard’.

Realising that his cash-strapped administration was in dire straits, then Prime Minister Maurice Bishop defied the odds and led a delegation to Libya in 1982, returning with a bounty of development aid including five million dollars to build a new airport and international runway for the tourist-dependent island of fewer than 100,000 people. After all, he reasoned at the time, Grenada was not getting any aid from the West.

U.S. President Ronald Reagan, however, was closely monitoring events on the Caribbean island, especially because Grenadians also were traveling to another nation deemed a pariah by the West – Fidel Castro’s Cuba – to train in fields ranging from medicine to military disciplines.

In October 1983, within a year of Bishop’s Libyan trip, the United States invaded the island, launching its forces after Bernard Coard, then deputy prime minister, led party dissidents in overthrowing the government and killing Bishop and six Cabinet ministers. Although Washington said it moved to ensure the safety of U.S. medical students on the island, it had been watching Grenada’s left-wing politicians with increasing concern for quite some time. The coup leaders are serving life sentences in a Grenadian prison.

Under U.S. tutelage, the political pendulum began to swing the other way and Grenada now has a right-wing government, with Mitchell at the helm. But the financial wheel has turned full circle. Once again, aid is in desperately short supply – hence Mitchell’s decision to embark for Tripoli.

“We are interested in getting a write off for the 5 million dollars we got for building the airport and we hope to negotiate support in the area of agricultural diversification, the building of farm roads, refurbishment of schools, expansion of the information and communication technology sector and human resource development,” said Nancy McGuire, Mitchell’s spokesperson.

Charles and Gonsalves have not said what they expect from the trip, although they have noted that it is being undertaken at a time when tourist revenues are down, when the lifeline banana industry is under threat from international trade disputes, when Western countries are blacklisting the Caribbean for registering offshore banks and trust companies, and when Western aid is in serious decline.

All three leaders are from the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), a sub-grouping of the 15-nation Caribbean Community that is in the throes of an economic meltdown.

U.S. assistance to the Caribbean has fallen from 225 million dollars 10 years ago to 120 million dollars. With nearly 60 percent of the total earmarked for Haiti alone, 13 other independent states are left to vie for the leftovers. In addition, the banana industry, the traditional economic linchpin of the OECS, is now in deep trouble following a successful U.S. move, through the World Trade Orgnisation, against European Union preference for Caribbean imports over those from U.S.-owned Latin American plantations.

Tourism – the other OECS lifeline – also is on a downward slope and the region has been hurt further by France’s decision, last year, to pull out of the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank – in part, because French companies were not getting enough contracts in the Community.

Libya, by contrast, has made overtures to numerous developing countries and has been pressing its vision for a new pan-African union. Shunned by the West, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has offered potential partners investment and aid in exchange for political ties.

So determined is Mitchell to secure that assistance, that he criticised Bird last week for dropping out. He dismissed Bird’s reason, that Antigua lacked diplomatic relations with Libya, saying the matter had been laid to rest at last month’s OECS leaders’ summit, which approved the visit. Of the five countries sending delegates to Tripoli, only Grenada and Dominica have diplomatic relations with Libya.

Nevertheless, other regional leaders have voiced reservations about the trip.

Just before the delegations were due to depart, Prime Minister Basdeo Panday of Trinidad and Tobago warned his colleagues about possible negative consequences, despite the dire economic circumstances facing the smaller island nations.

“I can understand the need for them to look for resources for their economies, yet they have to take into consideration international repercussions,” Panday said, clearly referring to the U.S. and British position that Libya is a sponsor of international terrorism.

Regional newspapers have echoed this sentiment, just as they did in 1982.

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