Leaders of all 15 Caribbean Community (Caricom members) will meet with U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, separately, during the fifth Summit of the Americas, sources from the host said.
The Obama-Caricom meeting is being organized "tentatively" after the opening ceremony of the summit, sources from the Trinidad and Tobago government were quoted by Thursday's Trinidad Express as saying.
Caricom is a group of Caribbean nations and territories, and its current 15 full members include Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat (a territory of Britain), Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Caricom leaders will also meet with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper here on Saturday. Obama, who is due to arrive here Friday, will also meet with Central American leaders in a second group and a third group composed of heads of state of South America and Mexico, including Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
The White House has reportedly said that time constraints would have made the president's individual meetings with the various leaders difficult. The opening ceremony of the April 17-19 summit starts at 5 p.m. (2100 GMT), followed by cocktails.
Sources said the proposed Caricom/Obama meeting will be important because it comes at a time when Caricom economies are suffering from the global economic crisis, specifically the tourism failures, significant dropouts in remittances (from families living in North America), the contraction in employment in the bauxite companies in Jamaica, exacerbating their problems over access in the European market for their sugar and banana, arising out of U.S. objections in support of American fruit multinational operating in Latin America.
These problems have all led to serious internal adjustments, for example, the significant ministerial pay cut in Jamaica as part of the institution of a pay freeze in an effort to save 22,000 public sector jobs. Given Caricom's support for the lifting of the Organization of the Americas (OAS) suspension against Cuba, it is likely that this issue may feature in the Obama-Caricom meeting.
Source:Xinhua
|
Comment
Tell A Friend
Print Format
Save Article