(Barbados Nation) By as early as the first week in September, four Caribbean leaders will have in their possession a position paper on plans to deepen political integration in the region.

Prime Minister Owen Arthur made this disclosure yesterday while addressing members of the Press at Government Headquarters on Bay Street, St Michael.

Arthur, who was accompanied by Prime Minister Patrick Manning of Trinidad and Tobago, Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and The Grenadines and their Grenada counterpart, Dr Keith Mitchell, said: “There will now be the appearance as if there are two parallel efforts being made in the region to deepen our processes of regional governance. That is true and it is a good thing.

“When Manning spoke earlier this year he put on the table a notion of our going to a higher political form of integration to better manage our regional affairs to accommodate all interests and countries in the region. That exercise that was originally started by Manning was given a format by regional heads in the creation of a task force led by Gonsalves.”

He added: “It was agreed that we already have a political form of integration in the Caribbean - Caricom - which in its political form is an association of sovereign states with each member country retaining sovereign rights in relation to decisions as they concern regional action.

“The Gonsalves task force met and discussed how best the machinery of governance within Caricom as a community of sovereign states could be improved.”

The Barbados Prime Minister said Trinidad, St Vincent, Grenada and Barbados had agreed that without doing “violence” to their regional obligations or without doing anything that would undermine the vitality of the economic aspects of integration, the countries should build upon the fact that there is scope for functional co-operation.

He gave the assurance that the form of political integration would not be at variance with the provisions of the Treaty of Chaguaramas.

Arthur told members of the Press the leaders saw the opportunity for them to have a stronger form of political cooperation among themselves.

The Prime Minister disclosed that at yesterday¹s meeting the heads of government agreed that they would commission the preparation of a concept paper by a task force that would specify the nature of the deeper form of political co-operation.

Arthur further said that with political integration there was scope for sub-regional action in such areas as security, transport, the better management of the region¹s maritime affairs, matters pertaining to disaster preparedness and management and a whole range of social transformation issues.

According to Arthur, there was the distinct possibility in the south-eastern Caribbean sub-region of the countries sharing services and providing new common services at lesser cost to each government.

In his first term as Prime Minister, Manning had proposed a tighter union between Trinidad, Barbados and Guyana. The proposal, which came to be known as the Manning Initiative, did not get very far.

Yesterday’s meeting comes on the heels of the ground-breaking announcement over the weekend at the summit of CARICOM Heads in Jamaica that they had agreed in principle to an executive commission to manage the implementation of decisions and to initiate proposals.