Gail Alexan­der

The main con­cerns raised at the 31st Cari­com sum­mit by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar end­ed up at sum­mit con­clu­sion�last night�with a re­sponse from�Cari­com lead­ers pledg­ing to start pay­ing up ar­rears on cer­tain re­gion­al projects and to be­gin moves to re­vive the flag­ging 37-year-old re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tion. The points were among sum­mit con­clu­sion an­nounce­ments by Cari­com chair­man Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter Bruce Gold­ing at the clos­ing�me­dia brief­ing last night. And in the face of calls for Cari­com sec­re­tary gen­er­al Ed­win Car­ring­ton to stand down to al­low Cari­com to go for­ward, Car­ring­ton�said he would be con­sid­er­ing shift­ing from the in­sti­tu­tion�which he had head­ed for the past 18 years.�

"I nev­er came to stay, I'll cer­tain­ly think about it," Car­ring­ton said. Gold­ing said sum­mit dis­cus­sions had been in­tense, many of which had in­volved dif­fer­ences of views. Gold­ing said the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Fund–on�which Per­sad Bisses­sar had ex­pressed con­cerns re­gard­ing T&T sup­port–re­mains un­der­cap­i­talised. He said coun­tries were un­der fis­cal stress. How­ev­er, Ja­maica had paid up US$11 mil­lion and hoped to pay in tranch­es�to ho­n­our its com­mit­ment. Asked about her con­cerns on out­stand­ing bal­ances for the CDF and fi­nan­cial sup­port for the re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "My col­leagues have said they would make ef­forts to put in the out­stand­ing pay­ments�and we'll have to give the state time to ho­n­our their pledges and com­mit­ment to the com­mu­ni­ty.

"In ad­di­tion, there is a re­source mo­bil­i­sa­tion sub­com­mit­tee to seek fund­ing over oth­er spon­sors." On whether T&T would be the source of all this fund­ing, Per­sad- Bisses­sar said: "The bot­tom line is no...We've said that clear­ly to our col­leagues and they ful­ly�un­der­stand�as they're al­so ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the kind of�fis­cal dif­fi­cul­ty we're hav­ing and I think to­geth­er we'll�try and source fund­ing else­where. "We meet in Sep­tem­ber to re­view the arrange­ment and com­mit­ment giv­en." Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was tak­ing the re­spons­es at face val­ue and would ex­am­ine the is­sues again in Sep­tem­ber. Gold­ing al­so said there were pro­pos­als on how the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty pro­gramme would be sourced. He said the amount out­stand­ing by mem­ber states would be enough to en­sure con­tin­ued�op­er­a­tion and ex­pan­sion of the pro­gramme.

He said lead­ers will ex­am­ine the sit­u­a­tion again in Sep­tem­ber hop­ing to source ex­ter­nal re­sources for the pro­gramme since se­cu­ri­ty was very im­por­tant to the re­gion. Gold­ing al­so said there was in­suf­fi­cient align­ment of de­ci­sions�and re­sources pro­vid­ed by do­mes­tic gov­ern­ments. He said Cari­com lead­ers can­not op­er­ate out­side their Fi­nance Min­istries and some ac­tion should be tak­en to cal­i­brate heads' de­ci­sion on is­sues and get prop­er clear­ance. He al­so sug­gest­ed a sys­tem be im­ple­ment­ed to en­sure en­durance of arrange­ments for Cari­com's work to con­tin­ue when re­gion­al gov­ern­ments change.