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OAS AND CARICOM REVIEW COOPERATION AGREEMENT

The ten year-old cooperation agreement between the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) came up for review Tuesday, during a high-level meeting at OAS Headquarters in Washington.

Sandra Honore, Chief of Staff of the OAS Assistant Secretary General, and Colin Granderson, CARICOM Assistant Secretary General for International and Community Relations, both presided at the daylong meeting that discussed a wide-ranging agenda of issues, with representatives of several OAS departments and units providing status reports on projects in which they are engaged in the Caribbean region.

The four-member CARICOM contingent met afterwards with Caribbean Ambassadors accredited to the OAS, for separate discussions.

Honore said this OAS/CARICOM meeting, the third since the agreement was signed, provided an opportunity for both Secretariats to make presentations and exchanges, and to look at ways in which "the work that we are doing can in fact be of mutual benefit and of benefit to the people of the Caribbean Community, fourteen members of which are also members of the OAS."

For his part, Granderson noted that an important focus of cooperation between the two organizations surrounds the joint OAS/CARICOM initiatives to help resolve Haiti's political crisis. He said CARICOM is preparing to send a technical mission to follow up on issues relating to the French-speaking nation's membership in the regional grouping. Haiti was formally accepted into the bloc earlier this year.

Granderson stressed that collaboration—ranging from education to sustainable development to trade, among other projects—has helped Caribbean nations improve technical capacity in a number of vital areas. On trade matters, he noted the particular benefit in helping Caribbean countries further develop negotiating skills to participate in the present round of negotiations on the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), due onstream by 2005.

The meeting also discussed a series of projects under the CARICOM-OAS Regional Programming Framework 2003-2005 that articulates four priority areas: economic diversification and integration, trade liberalization and market access; social development and creation of productive employment; scientific development and exchange and technology transfer; and education.

Another important issue touched on was the upcoming OAS high-level meeting, slated for St. Vincent and the Grenadines in January, on special security concerns of small island states.

The OAS and CARICOM Secretariats agreed as well that, among other things, they would seek to hold meetings more regularly and would develop more information exchange on international meetings that are of vital importance to both.

Reference: E-216/02