Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning has urged cit­i­zens to be sup­port­ive of ef­forts for next week's Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) since in­vest­ment flows from it will "re­dound to the ben­e­fit of present and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions." In an ad­dress to the na­tion last night, Man­ning said: "Every pos­i­tive sto­ry of T&T that em­anates from this meet­ing will go a long way to­wards our in­ter­na­tion­al promi­nence." CHOGM prepa­ra­tions were mov­ing very smooth­ly and were in an ad­vanced state of readi­ness, he said. "Our re­cent ex­pe­ri­ence of suc­cess­ful­ly host­ing the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as just sev­en months ago is now serv­ing us in ex­cel­lent stead," Man­ning said.

He said se­cu­ri­ty for the event must be "flaw­less­ly ad­e­quate," since Queen Eliz­a­beth II, head of the Com­mon­wealth and the Duke of Ed­in­burgh would be at­tend­ing, along with with 40 of the 51 Com­mon­wealth lead­ers, plus sig­nif­i­cant oth­er del­e­ga­tions and dig­ni­taries. "Ad­just­ments will nec­es­sar­i­ly have to be made by all of us, but these will be done with min­i­mum dis­lo­ca­tion to our nor­mal dai­ly lives," Man­ning said. He said T&T's rep­u­ta­tion had been sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­hanced by the host­ing of in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences.

He added that T&T would be even more than usu­al in the glob­al spot­light with CHOGM and would have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­in­force its rep­u­ta­tion as a pro­gres­sive place. Man­ning said T&T, as host, would al­so ex­pe­ri­ence in­valu­able pro­mo­tion for its sta­bil­i­ty, har­mo­nious di­ver­si­ty, democ­ra­cy and ad­her­ence to hu­man rights and free­doms.

"We feel cer­tain that, among oth­er ben­e­fits, as has hap­pened in oth­er coun­tries that host­ed the CHOGM, in­vest­ment flows in­to our coun­try would in­crease as a re­sult of the meet­ing be­ing held in Port-of-Spain," he said. "In­deed, we in­tend to cap­i­talise on this un­prece­dent­ed sit­u­a­tion which will bring busi­ness lead­ers and in­vestors from all over the globe to our coun­try. "Through the Com­mon­wealth Busi­ness Fo­rum alone, for ex­am­ple, some 800 del­e­gates will at­tend and use the op­por­tu­ni­ty to build busi­ness part­ner­ships, cre­ate trade link­ages and set up com­mer­cial ven­tures. Man­ning said lead­ers would dis­cuss the crit­i­cal is­sue of cli­mate change to for­mu­late a po­si­tion for a cru­cial Unit­ed Na­tions meet­ing on the is­sue in Copen­hagen next month. He said T&T's CHOGM was there­fore most im­por­tant to the process.

"We have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pos­i­tive­ly in­flu­ence its out­come," he said. "In­deed, T&T is do­ing its ut­most to ad­vance the process that could re­sult in a glob­al agree­ment on this cru­cial mat­ter af­fect­ing all of hu­man­i­ty. "T&T has been at the cen­tre of the fren­zied ac­tiv­i­ty among lead­ing na­tions from both the de­vel­oped and de­vel­op­ing world as we seek to en­sure that we take the strongest pos­si­ble po­si­tion in prepa­ra­tion for the Copen­hagen meet­ing." As ev­i­dence of this, Man­ning said France's Pres­i­dent Nicholas Sarkozy, Prime Min­is­ter Ras­mussen, of Den­mark, and Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Na­tions, Ban Ki Moon, would be on of­fi­cial vis­its to T&T to par­tic­i­pate in this process.