Antigua and Barbuda's Prime Minister Lester Bird has issued a call for a CARICOM meeting on the closure of the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) and has offered his country as the venue for the caucus.

He also proposed that the CMC situation be placed on the agenda of the impending CARICOM Bureau meeting, a press release from Bird's office yesterday stated.

And Prime Minister of Grenada Dr Keith Mitchell expressed surprise at the sudden suspension of CMC's operations and wants to "do anything I can to help with getting it back in operation," a CMC press release issued yesterday said.

The CARICOM Bureau comprises three heads of government and the Secretary-General and is scheduled to meet in a few days. The current members are Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham of the Bahamas, Prime Minister Said Musa of Belize, and President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana.

In his letter to the Secretary-General, which was copied to all CARICOM heads of government, Bird said: "As we are moving towards the solidifying of the single market and economy (SME) in CARICOM, it is unsatisfactory that the region should lose the means of informing each member state about the developments in the other. The SME would suffer considerably from this loss, as indeed would the entire process of regional integration which has benefited immeasurably from the daily flow of information provided by CANA, the CBU and the merged CMC."

Bird proposed the urgent convening of the ministers of information of CARICOM and/or representatives of heads of government, where the heads are also information ministers.

The meeting would consider appropriate measures either to resuscitate the CMC or replace it with another organisation that would provide information and analysis about events in the region.

The Antiguan Prime Minister asked that the bureau endorse his proposal for a meeting on CMC.

The CMC release said the organisation has written to the Grenadian Prime Minister, who is also the information minister, saying it was keen to have an urgent opportunity to explain the situation and what it would take to have the CMC return to full operation.

In a letter from CMC's Chief Operating Officer, Gary Allen, to Prime Minister Mitchell, the organisation said it welcomed the offer of support. According to the release, Dr Mitchell said other information ministers had been in touch with him about an urgent meeting to consider the matter, and he had been supportive of this move.

The CMC explained to the Grenadian Prime Minister that the sudden closure of the agency CMC was not the way it was intended to have been handled. It was pointed out, however, that "when speculation heightened and rumours started to spread about a closure, the board and the management determined that immediate closure was best," the release stated.

CMC announced the temporary suspension of its operations for restructuring last Friday. Fifty of the 54 members of staff of the organisation were laid off.

CMC is a merger of the Caribbean News Agency and the Caribbean Broadcasting Union, which, for the past 17 months, has been the region's only multi-media entity (print, radio, television and internet).