Tomorrow Caricom Heads of Government will meet in the Bahamas in an Emergency Summit. Their meeting has been preceded by a Ministerial meeting which "processed" the issues and prepared the way for decisions.

The occasion of the meeting is to consider steps to cope with the adverse effects of the September ll events on the region - effects which will bite deeper with the War. But that should only be the beginning for thinking hard and taking even harder decisions on issues which together constitute a wider Caribbean crisis, a crisis unfolding in a New World Order that has no place for small states.

As the summit meets, the most developed member of the region, Trinidad and Tobago, is toppling headlong into a seemingly unresolvable constitutional disaster. Prime Minister Panday will soon have no option but to call a general election. As the Opposition PNM is resolved not to contest any election on the existing voters list, Trinidad could have a minority and ineffective government for a prolonged period - a situation which could have grave consequences for the whole region and the integration movement, and maybe for Guyana in particular.

At the other end of the Caribbean in Jamaica, the largest and most populous Caricom state, political "tribal" warfare continues in Kingston and is apparently no longer resolvable by the political leadership.

In this unstable context the September ll events amplified the effects of both the structural problems of the region and the world wide recession which were already impacting on the region. Two airlines had earlier in the year pulled out of the Eastern Caribbean with consequent sharp downturn on hotel bookings. Tourism is the major foreign exchange earner for Jamaica and is together with bananas and offshore banking the life-blood of the Eastern Caribbean states. Thus the further sharp decline in tourist bookings, together with the decline of remittances from migrant communities, could destroy the fragile statehood of the OECS.

But this is not the case with Guyana. Tourism is still to take off here and no one knows the extent of the contribution of remittances to the economy. But we should nevertheless be deeply concerned with the long term and inescapable impact of the recession as it engulfs the world. It is likely that the sugar market and price will hold. But what about the markets for rice and timber and especially plywood and seafood and furniture and finished garments. Will these markets hold as the recession bites deeper, especially as higher freight costs and insurance charges may make our products less competitive? Will there be any slowdown in access to the international funds which are central to our major development projects?

President Jagdeo in briefing the press on his participation in the Bahamas Summit might also have mentioned Guyana's faltering economy which is likely to be pushed into deeper negative growth. If the private sector is recognised as the engine of growth and in view of the prospect that the trickle of foreign investment will further diminish, is it not urgently necessary to provide additional incentives to encourage the existing private sector to expand investment? The private sector maintains that current taxation is unnecessarily complex and burdensome. On the other hand there is the view in some quarters that the funds accruing from tax liberalisation would most likely end up in savings accounts in Miami rather than in new investment. But it should not be beyond ingenuity to devise a tax engine which ties acceleration in earnings to investment.

As a first step Go-Invest might make, in consultation with the private sector, an inventory of proposed investments. This exercise should not be conceived as a wish list but as a basis for serious consideration as to how the existing tax system might be amended to promote such new investment.

What is truly surprising is that nowhere, in either the private or public sectors, are any proposals being canvassed to research, to study together and formulate measures to cope with the effect of the recession.

As the problems touched on above are likely to be region wide and additional to the specific effects of the September ll events, should not the Heads of Government meeting in emergency session consider a bold initiative such as the launching of a Plan for the Caribbean. Is it not time to return to the concept of a Development Plan for the region to be funded primarily by the World Bank the Inter-American Bank, the Caribbean Development Bank and the European Development Fund?

But of more importance than any specific issue before the Emergency Summit is the need for the Heads of Government to ponder the nature of the emerging world in which Caricom leaders must further pursue their affairs. It is a world which is utterly different to the one in which independence was achieved and in which Caricom was formed. That was a world which to a significant degree respected international norms and standards and rules. The emerging world, responding to terror, will be based on naked power and realpolitik, that is the only thing which counts is the interests of the state.

Take two instances which open windows on the future. Pakistan was until now a pariah state suspended from Commonwealth membership since self-designated President Musharraf came to power in a military coup. But last week end Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, founder and lynchpin of the Commonwealth beat a path to his door. We heard a lot about what Pakistan was asked to do but what did general Musharraf ask for? It is likely that the pressure on him in the future to hold early elections will cease. Moreover Pakistan will be the receipt of massive economic assistance to be arranged by the G7 and the IMF, as Musharraf comes in from the cold.

It will now be left to the newer members of the Commonwealth to insist on democratic values as the essential bases for Commonwealth membership.

Or take another instance, President Putin meeting with NATO last week, suddenly and solely detected that NATO was becoming a political entity with which Russia could have a good relationship - sentiments which were warmly welcomed by Lord Robertson, the Secretary General of NATO, in his nearly understandable brogue. The price? The European Union may no longer call for the ending of the brutalities and atrocities of the Russian army in Chechnya.

It will no longer be a rule-based world. It will be a world in which Caricom small states including Guyana will find it increasingly difficult to survive and to develop.