Out of that folklore was to emerge the unflattering sobriquet of this small ham-shaped popular tourism destination of the Eastern Caribbean, as ‘Little England’. It is not a nickname that amuses militant Barbadian nationalists.

In sharp contrast, yesterday's ‘Little England’ - that has its own policy differences with Tony Blair's Labour Party administration in London - is today's small Barbados, one of the more smaller states in the Western Hemisphere - that feels confident enough to openly rebuke the mighty United States of America on some very fundamental issues of importance to more than the entire Caribbean region.

Now, it seems to be a case of ‘Go ahead America, Barbados disagrees with you’.

The chosen occasion, that also has much to do with good timing - this week's hosting of the 32nd General Assembly of the Organisation of American States (OAS) - was last week's passage by the Barbados House of Assembly and Senate of a new ‘Anti-Terrorism Bill 2002’.

From Prime Minister Owen Arthur to his Foreign Minister Billie Miller, and Attorney General and Minister of Home Affairs, Mia Mottley, to opposition and government MPs and Senators, the basic message to the U.S.A. was quite explicit:

We are friends. We wish to maintain good relations. But your policies point to double standards, whether on human rights and democracy, and specifically failure to either ratify or sign international treaties and conventions. Or, on matters of subsidised trade (for U.S. farmers) and economic development.

Distinguishing difference
There was really nothing special in the passage of the Anti-Terrorism Bill itself. Indeed, Barbados was quite late in enacting such legislation.

Others of its Caribbean partners had done so much earlier. The exception, of course, being Trinidad and Tobago, where a post-election political impasse continues to prevent the meeting of Parliament to conduct the nation's business.

Barbados, like all 189 members of the United Nations, were required to tighten anti-terrorism legislation since September last year, in the wake of the terrorists strikes launched against the U.S.A. on September 11.

The UN Security Council had unanimously adopted the wide-ranging anti-terrorism resolution, 1373, on September 28 -undoubtedly under the heavy influence of the U.S.A. Among other features, it requires suppression of all forms of terrorism, financing of terrorist acts and for greater international cooperation.

The approved resolution, that also created a special committee to monitor its implementation and report on defaulting member states, provided the basis for UN members to enact legislation relevant to their domestic demands and in the context of the global war against terrorism.

However, while I missed the quality of the contributions/interventions in the anti-terrorism legislation debates in other CARICOM parliaments, a particularly distinguishing feature of the debate in the Barbados Parliament was the unusual, uncharacteristic verbal blasts against 'Uncle Sam' by some cabinet ministers and others on specific issues.

Take for example, the warning from Prime Minister Arthur that cooperation in the fight against terrorism "will not be done uncritically". He followed with the reminder that the international community has an obligation to small, poor and developing nations to remain "focused on the agenda of development" in the same way that it was focused in the fight against international terrorism.

His colleague, former Tourism Minister Johnny Cheltenham, was more precise. According to him, the U.S.A. had not been "a good neighbour"; one that remains "insensitive" to its obligations in honouring international treaties and conventions; and seemed bent on minimising or replacing the development agenda with its own obsession in the war against international terrorism.

Foreign Minister Billie Miller, an old hand in foreign policy and a close ally of the NGOs and advocates of human rights, diplomatically appealed not only to the U.S.A. but all of the leading industrial nations, caught up in the war against terrorism, to demonstrate consistency in their expressed commitment to help the small and poor nations.

She singled out the hypocrisy, for instance, of the U.S. administration's new policy of increased subsidy for American farmers, a move that would negatively impact on the export capacity of agricultural products from the Caribbean and other poor and developing regions.

"We are heartily sick and tired", said Miller, "of being told by the developed world that we must do as they say and not necessarily as they do..."

But it took the courage, the clarity of the country's Attorney General, Mottley, who is also the influential General Secretary of the governing Barbados Labour Party, to tell it like it is to Uncle Sam.

Saying it was not her desire to "spoil" U.S.-Barbados relations, she rapped the Bush administration on specific cases that reveal a double standard, hypocritical behaviour in the leadership America insists in providing in its war against global terrorism.

She cited, for example, Washington's failure or blunt refusal to date to sign or ratify treaties and conventions pertaining to the Rights of the Child, the Kyoto Accord on protection of the environment and the consequences of global warming for Third World nations; its walking away from enforcement of the 1972 treaty prohibiting biological weapons; and, more recently, its notification to the United Nations that the U.S.A. will not be a member of the International Criminal Court

She has also made sharp criticisms of what she sees as evident discrimination by the U.S.A. in the treatment of Afghan prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, some in contravention of the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war. Also, the continued racial and cultural profiling of non-Americans deemed by the Bush administration as "terrorists".

The OAS General Assembly will be formally declared open Sunday evening with the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, among the dignitaries and some 800 official delegates and observers.