This coun­try’s dis­cus­sions with the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) lead­er­ship on Tues­day, has re­sult­ed in the OAS en­cour­ag­ing more en­gage­ment with the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) in the ar­eas of se­cu­ri­ty, de­vel­op­ment, hu­man rights and oth­er is­sues.

This was con­firmed in in­for­ma­tion from the For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry yes­ter­day, af­ter For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne met with Luis Al­ma­gro Lemes, Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the OAS in Los An­ge­les, USA.

Browne is in LA to­geth­er with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young at­tend­ing the 9th Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as. It is or­gan­ised by the OAS.

US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden will this evening launch the sum­mit, with an ex­pect­ed an­nounce­ment on an “Amer­i­c­as Part­ner­ship” fo­cus­ing on sup­ply chains, clean en­er­gy, trade, eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery and mo­bil­is­ing in­vest­ments.

Work­ing ses­sions with re­gion­al lead­ers fol­low over the next two days.

The min­istry stat­ed that Browne and Al­ma­gro Lemes “en­gaged in fruit­ful dis­cus­sions about the nexus” be­tween the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty and the OAS.

Browne ad­vo­cat­ed for the re­cruit­ment of more Cari­com pro­fes­sion­als in the OAS Sec­re­tari­at, and the dis­cus­sion in­clud­ed the shar­ing of per­spec­tives on cur­rent trends and de­vel­op­ments with­in the hemi­sphere.

Browne em­pha­sised the need for mem­ber coun­tries and or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the OAS to cre­ate and main­tain a pos­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment con­ducive to di­a­logue among all ac­tors.

The min­istry stat­ed that Al­ma­gro Lemes “ac­knowl­edged the en­abling ap­proach tak­en by Cari­com mem­ber states to­wards OAS ob­jec­tives, and en­cour­aged more en­gage­ment with Cari­com in the ar­eas of se­cu­ri­ty, de­vel­op­ment, hu­man rights, ed­u­ca­tion and pro­mot­ing good gov­er­nance.”

“Dis­cus­sions were cor­dial and pro­duc­tive and end­ed with both of­fi­cials agree­ing to con­tin­ue di­a­logue in the best in­ter­est of all the peo­ple of the re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as,” the min­istry stat­ed.

There are 35 mem­bers in the OAS.

Yes­ter­day, CNN re­port­ed that the White House had con­firmed 23 lead­ers are at­tend­ing the sum­mit, in­clud­ing Brazil’s Jair Bol­sonaro, who ini­tial­ly was un­cer­tain to show.

But some lead­ers — Mex­i­co, El Sal­vador, Hon­duras, Guatemala, St Vin­cent and An­tigua–aren’t at­tend­ing.

Biden’s launch to­day is ex­pect­ed to al­so un­veil US$300 mil­lion-plus as­sis­tance to fight food in­se­cu­ri­ty, as well as health ini­tia­tives and part­ner­ship on cli­mate re­silience.

To­mor­row, heads of del­e­ga­tions will con­vene for a ple­nary ses­sion on dis­cus­sion top­ics. These range from en­er­gy part­ner­ship and im­mi­gra­tion flow is­sues to im­proved pan­dem­ic man­age­ment, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and cli­mate change. - Gail Alexan­der

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