The Third Caribbean/UK Forum, which opens in Georgetown today is as its range of participation clearly shows, a major regional conference. On the other hand it has not been easy to get precise information on its agenda, how it will work and its likely outcomes.

The forum will be attended by the UK Foreign Minister, our own Foreign Minister and the foreign ministers and ministers from CARICOM member states, including Haiti together with Cuba and the Dominican Republic. The UK's non independent states, including Bermuda, will attend and there will be representatives from nearly all the important regional institutions, including the CARICOM Secretariat, Caribbean Development Bank, UWI, UG, the Caribbean Association of Industry and Commerce and the West Indies Committee/Council for Europe.

And what will be the agenda for such heavyweight, all inclusive representation? Various subjects have been mentioned International Developments which impact on the region, Trade, Investment, Debt Relief including the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, Effects of September 11, UK assistance with forthcoming negotiations, Drug Trafficking, Coping with HIV and AIDS, Regional Security and Law Enforcement, Education and Culture and Funding for Iwokrama.

The method for dealing with such varied matters, a veritable "cook up" or shopping list, has been described as a rolling process. While the agenda seems unfocused, the UK's commitment as attested by its 40 member delegation including two Caribbean ministers Baroness Amos of Guyana and Baroness Scotland of Dominica may nevertheless ensure significant results.

On the other hand, while the UK's strong support for the forum process is not in doubt, it will not be easy to secure forward movement on such matters as HIPC debt relief and the forthcoming negotiations with the European Union.

Guyana is the only Caribbean country on the HIPC list of 42 eligible countries. The much publicized poverty reduction programme, although intrinsically valuable is, as has been disclosed, part and parcel of the process leading to HIPC relief. Indeed some critics have described it as structural adjustment with a human face. If and when Guyana's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) is endorsed by the World Bank and the IMF, Guyana will qualify for some interim debt service relief. It is not known what stage the PRSP has reached in the HIPC process.

In the case of the forthcoming negotiations with the EU, a decision has already been taken by the EU, a decision in which the UK, as part of the EU, participated, that the next phase of the relationship with the Caribbean will take the form of a regional partnership agreement between the EU and the Caribbean, a form with which the region is generally unhappy. This form of agreement, which will in all likelihood destroy the solidarity of the ACP, will leave Caribbean states vulnerable to the reciprocal opening of their markets.

It has been disclosed that the forum will end with the publication of a Work Plan. This is surprising. One would have expected the Work Plan to be produced by officials/technicians with the Foreign Ministers meeting thereafter to make commitments, including financial commitments.

This is the second time in three months in which CARICOM is meeting the Foreign Minister of a major state, the debacle with the US Secretary of State Colin Powell being the first. Such meetings point to the imperative need of the Caribbean to form a common front and to have a regional plan in which their needs are clearly identified and in which what they have to offer is shown. That is the only basis on which partnership can be meaningful.

CARICOM is still trying to come to grips with the disintegrating effects on the region of two massive global developments, namely the end of the Cold War, which deprived the region of geo strategic significance and hence of external interest in its development and the commitment to liberalisation, which by eroding preferential markets threatens the core of its traditional economy.

CARICOM is still floundering, searching for a new global space, in which to deploy its resources. The pervasive attitude is one of "damage limitation," trying to hang on to the traditional markets as far as possible, a kind of mendicant attitude in which the future is tied to securing special international treatment as small, vulnerable mainly island states.

It is such attitudes which confuse and defeat the diplomatic attempts to formulate new approaches to both bilateral and international relations.

There is only one way forward. It is imperative, in the words of the founding Chaguaramas Treaty that CARICOM states must present "a common front in relation to the external world." But this injunction has never been taken seriously. With the movement over focused on market integration, the mechanism for the coordination of foreign policies started out as a kind of "stepchild" which could only make recommendations and not take decisions. Locked in their separate sovereignties, the member states ignored the several other provisions for coordination in the Treaty coordination in trade relations, coordination of positions and representations at international economic, financial and trade meetings, consultations in drawing up development plans, regular exchange of information on natural resources, promoting complementarity in national agricultural programmes and so on.

Yet forming a common front remains the only possible future if Caribbean states are not only to survive but to secure acceptable levels of living for their peoples through playing a role in setting the international agenda.

More than a decade ago, the highly developed states of the European Community moved to project a common front through the creation of the European Union. It is not a federation, not a United States of Europe, but some elements of sovereignty were exchanged for reasonable gains. More recently, the states of Africa, including the poorest and least developed countries of the world, moved to transform the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) into the African Union.

If the most highly developed and the least highly developed have found it necessary to project a common front to the world, is not such a move a matter of life and death for the small states of the Caribbean?

In the case of Africa their own experts have gone on to devise a Development Plan, the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) with the objectives of halting the marginalisation of Africa in the globalisation process, and the eradication of poverty. The NEPAD, when accepted, will be presented to the G8 (the group of most industrialized countries) offering Africa's vast resources as the basis for massive investment and economic assistance.

Is it not wholly practical for the Caribbean states to work towards a region wide plan; even as they move towards a union? Maybe the region cannot command the attention of the G8 although this should not be ruled out. But there could be other platforms of support. In the Coolum Declaration, Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Australia just a month ago, in welcoming the groundbreaking proposal from Africa, the NEPAD, pledged themselves "to use our best efforts to support similar partnerships in other regions of the Commonwealth."

Is this not a cue for the delegates meeting today to look beyond the urgencies of particular projects and seek wider perspectives which would restore to the region a creative strategy in place of "damage limitation"?

Towards the end of World War II in the 1940s, the British Government, to its credit, despite the exactions of war, initiated in the Caribbean, the Colonial Development and Welfare (CD&W) project which was to help restore stability to the West Indian societies which had been racked by the riots and disorder of the thirties and beyond. It should now be the challenge to UK policy, with its fourth largest economy in the world, to work in partnership with Caribbean leaders to move beyond a seemingly incoherent approach to the reconstitution of the region where the British overseas adventure began.