Prime Minister Patrick Manning indicated to Dominica's Prime Minister, Pierre Charles, yesterday that it would be difficult for any direct bilateral financial aid at this time in view of that country's default on a loan payment of some US$35M to RBTT Merchant Bank.

However, Manning assured yesterday's one-day special CARICOM Economic Summit that his government was committed to contributing to the creation of a multilateral Regional Stabilisation Fund, expected to be operated by the Caribbean Development Bank, to help cash-strapped economies, among them Dominica.

Manning was huddled in a closed-door session up to last night with other CARICOM (Caribbean Community) leaders and could not be reached for a comment on the precise position of Trinidad and Tobago on financial aid to Community partners.

But conference sources said that the Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister reaffirmed his government's plan for a proposed piped natural gas project between his country and various CARICOM states.

He first spoke of this project when he addressed last month's regular annual CARICOM Summit in Guyana.

While the Community leaders were focused during yesterday's meeting on the need for new approaches to deal with immediate and longer term fiscal and economic problems, there were disagreements over a lengthy draft agenda of some 15 pages.

This contributed to a further delay and the conclusion of the meeting was likely to clash with a dinner reception arranged for the leaders for around 8 o'clock last night.

With only Suriname unrepresented at heads level among the 15-member Community, and Haiti represented by its Foreign Minister, the leaders also discussed how best to mobilise support for the international community to release frozen economic aid to Haiti.

The Bahamas Prime Minister spoke of his immediate concern in checking the flow of illegal Haitians to his country that was proving a drain on Bahamian financial and human resources in caring for them and arranging their repatriation.

He also reportedly told the summit that some of the issues being discussed could have been left to the Community's Finance Ministers, prompting some unofficial remarks about him reflecting the position of "a new boy on the block" having only recently come to office.

Presiding over the summit was CARICOM's current Chairman, Bharrat Jagdeo, President of Guyana. A communique was promised for release late last night.