Just over a week ago a Special Summit of the Americas was held in Monterrey Mexico. As it revealed the depth of the rift between the US administration and several Latin American governments, especially on the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, it was clearly an occasion of vital interest for the sub-region of the Caribbean.

The Summit has been mentioned here not to open up a discussion on its mixed outcome (that is a matter for separate consideration) but to make a sideways but nevertheless most important point namely that a Latin American event like the Monterrey Summit would have been of little or no significance to Caricom States some four decades ago as they emerged into independence. The initial foreign policy interest where it existed was directed to Africa and Asia and Third Worldism and in particular the Non-Aligned Movement . President Jagdeo's opting to go to India, instead of the Summit, may indeed be interpreted as a reversion to older foreign policy concerns.

The international context in which Caricom States must now make their way is in many ways fundamentally different to the world in which they took their first foreign policy steps and into which the Caricom integration movement was launched. Yet their foreign or external approaches and representation, except for the establishment of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM), remain virtually unchanged.

Caricom urgently needs a new diplomacy for survival. And it is in this domain that there may be the hardest choices.

The main features of the world into which Caricom essayed its first diplomatic steps are easily recalled. The newly independent states were heavily reliant on their inherited colonial economies, which however unsatisfactory, provided certainties in markets and prices for their export commodities. On the basis of such certainties some Caricom states could strike great poses on the world stage demanding a New International Economic Order (NIEO).

At the same time in the bipolar world of the two super-powers, the Caribbean region was perceived as being of high geo-strategic significance. The alignment of Caricom states attracted favours from one side or the other with internal systems likewise reflecting degrees of ideological commitment. While these small Caribbean states thus enjoyed the status of being sought after or favoured, the other side of the coin was penetration, conflict and insecurity.

At another level, the bipolar balance had consequences which favoured and amplified the diplomacy of small states. In the interstices of power, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) came to play a major role, with Caricom states playing a part in a large network of solidarity which included the Afro-Asian states. With the UN Security Council virtually immobilised by the veto of the rival superpower the UN General Assembly (UNGA) came to play a larger role. The UNGA became the preferred theatre for the diplomacy of developing, including Caricom, states through which they promulgated new norms for international conduct and development.

Through the NAM and the UNGA in particular, Caricom invoked international solidarity to counter the territorial threats to two of its members, Guyana and Belize.

This bare outline of the context in which Caricom diplomacy was first shaped will show that it has utterly changed. It is not difficult to itemise some of the major changes. The colonial economic base is rapidly eroding with preferential markets and prices under threat. No new major export products have emerged, except oil and steel in Trinidad and Tobago and the often fragile tourist product in a few island states.

The Caribbean region is no longer of strategic significance. All Caricom member states are committed in varying degrees to a market economy and private enterprise. However, the region is now tragically inserted into the international system as transit points for narco-trafficking with all the consequences in crime and societal disorder.

At the UN the Security Council not only dominates but ensures that the UN resonates to the concerns of power politics. There is seldom a murmur out of the General Assembly, and international norms are for the time being ignored and their agencies subject to pressure with the intent to undermine or destroy.

Most importantly, in place of or in addition to the ethnic-based linkages with Africa and Asia, it is now imperative to develop a diplomacy based on geographical proximity to Latin America. Hence the OAS must be moved into centre stage as a focus of diplomatic activities.

Fortunately Caricom has built into the integration arrangements a mechanism for co-ordination of foreign policy with the objective, to paraphrase the words of the Treaty of Chaguaramas, of speaking with one voice and forming a common front in relation to the external world. However the mechanism was late in coming into operation and coordination of foreign policy has remained the step-child of integration. It is noteworthy that in current efforts to deepen the integration process there is no word on it.

Precisely because of the concern with sovereignty, coordination has been at best intermittent consisting in the main of the two annual meetings of foreign ministers. Efforts to establish regular consultations of Caricom Ambassadors in some of the main capitals have as far as is known proven futile. What is urgently needed is an expanded division within the Caricom Secretariat which would enable it in particular to undertake two tasks as follows: First, it is necessary to undertake monitoring and early warning of impending crises so that there could be adequate preparation and coordination. Such an approach would have avoided the messy situation over the US demand for immunity of its citizens from prosecution before the International Court of Justice. A proposed delegation to Washington could have been sent before not after the debacle. Second, as is the case with foreign policy decision-making in several developed and developing countries, the coordination of foreign policies should be open and responsive to the market of ideas available in the regional universities, research institutes and so on. Not to be so open is for the Caricom region to sell itself short.

It is also necessary to reconsider and revise the relationship with those bodies which once advanced or amplified Caricom diplomacy namely the ACP and the NAM and the G-77. Both the NAM and the G-77 have at least for the time being lost their rationale. Now that the EU has decided to negotiate only region-specific agreements with the Caribbean the ACP may tend to lose its force as a grouping. It should be explained that hitherto the agreements concluded with the EU (Lome, Cotonou) were in respect of all three regions of the ACP, Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

By the same token, Caricom must now deepen direct diplomatic relations with key EU states, in addition to the relationship with the UK. David Jessop in his column in Sunday Stabroek has wisely recommended that it would be in Caricom's interest to establish as soon as possible a relationship with Poland, the most powerful of the group of states which will shortly join the EU.

In the context of the WTO negotiations Caricom must clearly move to a working relationship with the G-20, the new group of powerful states including Brazil, China and India. The aim must be to ensure that the special interests of small states form part of its agenda. As Brazil is the front runner in the G-20, Guyana is in a position to establish for Caricom a useful relationship. Brazil's President Lula Da Silva has already visited Africa and the Arab States to cement linkages. Caricom has something to offer. President Jagdeo has taken an important diplomatic initiative in suggesting to President Da Silva that Caricom could help to promote the linkages with Africa.

It can already be foreseen that the problems of Haiti will dominate the year, becoming a heavy burden on Caricom's already slim resources. So far Caricom action seems to rely heavily on the OAS. This will not wash. Haiti is a member of a Community and community must surely mean that Caricom must play the lead role, asserting the primacy of a family over membership of a club. Caricom's tentative efforts appear to have earned it the distrust if not the hostility of opposition forces who, let it be said, are being supported by international elements. Caricom's latest gambit is for a Ministerial group to meet with the opposition in the Bahamas, apparently it is said "to collect information" (BBC, Caribbean Report, January 16). The chilling words of Lloyd Best who once worked with the UN in Haiti must be recalled, that at present there is no solution, as the institutions which would make it possible are not in place. The only way forward may be for Caricom to try to put together a group (the USA, Canada, the OAS, UNDP, the EU and Caricom) which will formulate and impose a step by step road map including the release of now frozen economic assistance.

Overarching all issues is the maintenance of a relationship with the USA which would enable Caricom states to pursue their foreign policy objectives with acceptable independence. There is need for a diplomacy of reassurance but this must be a matter for separate discussion.

The important point for highest consideration is that Caricom is in a situation where there is a profound disjuncture between its approaches to and implementation of foreign policy and the international context in which it is being pursued. Meetings of Foreign Ministers with the usual agenda are now of limited relevance. There is need for a fundamental rethink and hard choices.

It seems inescapable that there should be a special conference on this grave subject - a conference which will spread the net wide to include among its participants not only officials but academics and the several former diplomats whose efforts once earned Caricom a respected place in international fora.