Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) lead­ers have end­ed three-days of a "pro­duc­tive" sum­mit in St Lu­cia on Fri­day agree­ing on a new for­eign pol­i­cy di­rec­tion that would al­low the 15-mem­ber trad­ing bloc to es­tab­lish deep­er re­la­tions with coun­tries oth­er than its tra­di­tion­al al­lies in Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca.

Host Prime Min­is­ter and Cari­com chair­man, Dr Ken­ny An­tho­ny said that it was im­per­a­tive for the re­gion to em­bark on the new for­eign pol­i­cy co-or­di­na­tion giv­en the "pro­found geopo­lit­i­cal and geo-eco­nom­ic changes tak­ing place in the glob­al en­vi­ron­ment and their im­pli­ca­tions for the com­mu­ni­ty's ex­ter­nal re­la­tions and its eco­nom­ic and de­vel­op­men­tal well-be­ing."

Heads of Gov­ern­ment em­pha­sised that for­eign pol­i­cy co-or­di­na­tion is not on­ly a guid­ing prin­ci­ple for Cari­com, but it is a nec­es­sary tool to achieve ef­fec­tive­ness in for­eign pol­i­cy out­comes." The re­gion­al coun­tries have said they will now look to deep­en their re­la­tions with the so-called BRICS coun­tries, name­ly, Brazil, Rus­sia, In­dia, South Africa and Chi­na while not push­ing aside the tra­di­tion­al part­ners such as Eu­rope, the Unit­ed States and Cana­da.

But he said the re­gion is con­cerned at new Eu­ro­pean Union de­vel­op­ment pol­i­cy which seeks to "al­ter the dy­nam­ics of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the EU and the ACP (African Caribbean and Pa­cif­ic) and al­so has the in­ten­tion to lim­it se­vere­ly the lev­el of grant fund­ing to mid­dle in­come coun­tries which in­clude many Caribbean states.

CMC