by Rickey Singh
Guyana Chronicle
May 15, 2001

BRIDGETOWN, (CANA) -- The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is 'puzzled and surprised' by United States Secretary of State Colin Powell's indication of his inability to meet the region's Foreign Ministers next month as originally planned.

CARICOM Secretary General Edwin Carrington said he was as perplexed as others in the Caribbean may be about the decision which came as "a real surprise" to him.

"I am afraid that I cannot offer an explanation, but I am still hoping that arrangements could be made to reschedule the Foreign Ministers meeting with Secretary of State Powell as soon as possible since such a meeting remains important", Carrington told CANA yesterday.

The Caribbean's Foreign Ministers meeting with the U.S. Secretary of State was originally planned for The Bahamas on June 7, following the General Assembly meeting of the Organisation of American States (OAS) in Costa Rica June 3-5, which Powell is expected to attend.

But according to ministerial sources, without offering any explanation or providing an alternative date for such a meeting, Powell has regretted that it would not be possible for him to be present.

Reports out of Washington last week had indicated that following meetings with some Caribbean Foreign Ministers in Washington in March and his subsequent meetings with Caribbean delegates at last month's Third Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, Powell may have felt that there was no longer any urgency for the scheduled June 7 meeting with the region's Foreign Ministers.

When this point was raised by Carrington, currently on visits to Montserrat and Dominica, he told CANA it was not for him to speculate about the circumstances for the decision by Powell not to make himself available for the planned meeting.

"We have a good relationship with him (Powell), but from the Caribbean's perspective", said the Community's Secretary General, "neither the meeting in March in Washington of five of our Foreign Ministers with the U.S. Secretary of State, nor the meeting he had with those Foreign Ministers in Quebec City could be a substitute for a full official meeting..."

The scheduled June7 meeting in The Bahamas -- host of the forthcoming regular annual CARICOM Summit in Nassau in July -- was to have been the first regular meeting of the U.S. Secretary of State and Caribbean Foreign Ministers since a change in administration from that of President Bill Clinton to President George W. Bush.

The tradition of at least one regular annual meeting in the USA or in the Caribbean, plus an informal meeting in New York to coincide with a new session of the United Nations General Assembly, was set by Powell's predecessor, Madeleine Albright, and Caribbean Foreign Ministers in the context of the historic 1997 'Barbados Agreement' between the Caribbean and the USA.

Trade, economic development and security issues were expected to be discussed at the planned Nassau meeting with Powell as well as seeking some "understanding" of what the Bush administration really has in mind when it talks of the Caribbean as the United States "third or southern border".

Jamaica's outgoing ambassador to Washington, Richard Bernal, who is replacing Alister McIntyre on the Caribbean's Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM), feels all effort needs to be made to maintain as a "fixture of our calendar" the meeting between Caribbean Foreign Ministers and the U.S. Secretary of State.