Stabroek News
June 13, 2001

The OAS, (Organisation of American States) is less familiar than the UN, or the EEC, now EU, or the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) or the Group of 77. That is because at the high point of Guyana's diplomacy, the point of high visibility, in the l970s Guyana had been excluded from membership of the OAS.

The OAS, founded in l95l is a complete multi-purpose regional system, like a form of UN limited to this hemisphere. It deals in addition to political and economic issues with a full range of other issues including such new areas as Human Rights, Gender and the Environment. One of its associate institutions, the Inter American Institute for Agricultural Development (IIAD) had long been established here before Guyana had secured full membership in the OAS.

Guyana, like Belize later on, had been excluded from membership under a provision of the OAS Charter which excluded States which had a territorial dispute with a Member State and in which dispute a State outside Latin America was involved. This provision was eventually amended to permit the entry of both Belize and Guyana.

Guyana's new Foreign Minister, Rudy Insanally, participated in the Ministerial Assembly of the OAS which was held last week in Costa Rica. Full information on that meeting is still to be released. So far news coverage has focused on the decision of the meeting not to adopt, despite enormous pressure, a so-called Democracy Charter but to defer its consideration to a special meeting to be held in September. The adoption was strongly resisted by Venezuela who it is reported in this paper had the support of a number of Caribbean states.

It might be too easy to dismiss this matter as another example of a maverick intervention by President Chavez. His Foreign Minister has argued that the proposed Democracy Charter would diminish sovereignty and open up the way to intervention. However, this would be to ignore the fact that the OAS has been associated in one way or another with several interventions in Caribbean Basin States, the last known being the intervention in the Dominican Republic. It is therefore a matter of prudence that the Democracy Charter should be so formulated as to secure a state's sovereignty.

Caricom's own relationship with the OAS is scarred with difficulties. A majority of the Latin States wished initially to exclude altogether all Caricom States from membership of the OAS on the grounds that it would fundamentally alter the political, cultural, judicial and sociological character of the Organisation. Put more directly the Latin membership of the OAS had perceived quite clearly that while their ruling groups like Bolivar himself derived from the ruling groups in Spain, the liberators in the Caribbean were the sons or grandsons of slaves and indentured workers.

A further difficulty was to come from the Caricom side when the four independent states of Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago established in l972 diplomatic relations with Cuba, thus bringing to an end its diplomatic isolation imposed by the OAS.

But the story is not all negative. The Constitution of the OAS was amended some time ago so that it could provide support for elected governments threatened with overthrow - a provision which could be of special importance for small states such as Guyana.

Because of such difficulties as have been touched on, there have been over the years two attempts to bypass the OAS. Both failed. First an attempt was made to establish a new organisation which would exclude the superpower, the USA, but which would include Cuba. The result was the Latin American Economic System (SELA) but this has turned out to be little more than a high powered Secretariat without political clout.

Later on Kissinger motivated by opposite reasons, tried to promote annual meetings of Foreign Ministers but despite two meetings the proposal developed no momentum and died with Kissinger's departure.

So despite the difficulties and ambiguities which have beset it the OAS remains active and relevant.

It could be made to provide the Caricom States with the major diplomatic opportunities which are needed to preserve the interests of those small states. There are 34 members of the OAS. Caricom now constitutes much more than a third and very nearly half of the membership.

In the current negotiations on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) the Caricom States are herded in with Central America, in the Committee dealing with smaller economies. But the defining circumstances as between the two groups, Caricom and Central America are utterly different. The vulnerabilities of Caricom derive from the plantation economy, the intrinsic disabilities of small islands and a different history. If the voice of Caricom is not to be smothered should not the negotiations with the FTAA be supported by a distinctive political identity asserted within the OAS?

These are considerations which could conceivably inform the process of designing a foreign policy to serve our interests.