COUNTRIES, large and small, over most of the globe have joined in expressing sympathy with the United States following the horrifying events of September 11. The terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center cost about 5,000 lives and among the dead were people from this region, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago as well as Guyana.

The Government and people of Guyana, facing severe economic difficulties and internal problems of governance, might now ask whether their expressions of sympathy were of any value in improving their relationship with their big neighbour to the north.

For in the midst of its troubles with Afghanistan, the bombing raids, the anticipated landing of troops, the spreading anthrax problem, the U.S. has found time to impose the sanction of denying the issue of non-immigrant visas to Guyanese.

Until Guyana agrees to accept 141 persons listed as Guyanese, whom the Americans want to deport, citizens of that Caricom country will be barred from entering the U.S.

Initially, it was stated last week, the restrictions, due to start October 10, would affect Guyanese Government functionaries, employees and their immediate family. In other words, it could be, for instance, that Guyanese diplomats to the United Nations might find themselves without visas to attend sessions of that organisation.

In Afghanistan with whom they are at war, the Americans are using high-tech offensive weapons from warships and aircraft to force the hand-over of Osama bin Laden. In the case of Guyana, with whom they are at peace, the Americans are using the big stick.

The U.S. is anxious to deport criminal aliens back to their Caribbean countries. Some of these people had migrated to New York and other cities as infants or children and do not know the countries from which their relatives brought them. They may know no relatives and have no friends.

Even more tragic for these people and the country they are being forced to enter, Guyana denies that some of those listed for deportation are at all Guyanese. But the U.S. is nevertheless proceeding to enforce a policy that will put an additional burden on a country already saddled with difficulties of one kind or another.

The United States often has expressed concern for the people of the Caribbean and has offered aid in one way or another. But at the same time it has contributed to considerable hardship in these territories by its bullying tactics.

Some Caribbean countries have surrendered meekly to demands they control or abolish lucrative offshore banking operations because, in Washington's eyes, they are seen to be centres for money laundering.

The regional drugs culture which the United States has been so eager to exterminate would not exist today were it not for the temptation of some people in Latin America and the Caribbean to satisfy the rampant American appetite for hard drugs, cocaine, heroin and, of course, marijuana.

The Americans have waved World Trade Organisation rules over the heads of the region to enable their banana producers, for example, to win benefits denied producers in Dominica, St Lucia and other territories.

In the face of these difficulties of which Washington is well aware, and at a time when the U.S. is seeking to put together an international alliance against terrorism, it is a strange approach for Washington to use arm-twisting tactics against a small and vulnerable Caribbean state.

Crime and lawlessness are already serious problems in Guyana and the decision to unload criminals from American jails and dump them in a struggling country is oppressive.

The policy of deporting criminals, who may have little or no connection with their countries of origin, is an indefensible one. Washington is compounding it by imposing sanctions against Guyana which has challenged the allegation that the deportees are truly Guyanese.

If it is not the case that the U.S. is interested in winning friends only among allies with military or economic clout, it should not behave in such a way as to leave the impression that the interests of small countries such as Guyana just do not count.
(Reprinted from yesterday's Trinidad Guardian.)