Other Countries

The Eighth Meeting of the Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD) of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) was held in Paramaribo, Suriname on 24-25 April 2003, with an Opening Ceremony on the afternoon of 24 April 2003.

After three rounds of negotiations CARICOM and Costa Rica concluded a Free Trade Agreement which holds the promise of significantly increasing trade between thirteen CARICOM countries and Costa Rica, a market of some 4 million persons. The negotiations were concluded in San José, Costa Rica, on 15 March 2003, with the initialling of the Agreement by the CARICOM negotiating spokesperson, Mr. Byron Blake, Assistant Secretary General of the Caribbean Community Secretariat and Mr. Fernando Ocampo, Director General of Foreign Trade of Costa Rica.

It is my pleasure to be here this afternoon to join you for this closing session of the Seventh Meeting of the Council for Human and Social Development, which is dedicated to the presentation of the CARIFESTA VIII Programme by the Surname National CARIFESTA Commission led by Minister Walter Sandriman. I regret that I could not be with you before but as the Deputy Secretary-General would have pointed out in her remarks at the opening session, my absence was unavoidable.

On 1 December 2001 the CARICOM/Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement will enter into force provisionally in the Dominican Republic - a market of some 8 million people - and in all CARICOM States, except Guyana and Suriname. These two States have not yet completed the administrative procedures.

The Commonwealth of The Bahamas is not a party to these trade arrangements.

A High level delegation from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the first Oversees Commonwealth Territory of the USA, is due in the country next week to begin negotiating closer relations with the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) by way of establishing new lines of communication with its executive arm, the Secretariat.

1. The Caribbean Community has been engaged with Haiti for a long time, as that country is part of the Caribbean sub-region. Haiti has also applied for full membership of the Caribbean Community and Common Market.

2. CARICOM Heads of Government have agreed to the establishment of a CARICOM Office in Haiti to support Haiti´s membership of the Community and I am pleased to inform that that staff will leave Georgetown this week-end to commence operations of that office, which will be housed in the Embassy of The Bahamas in Haiti.

Belize and Guatemala have made progress in dealing with the illegal Guatemalan settlements in Belize but the two countries still have a long way to go in resolving their 150-year-old territorial dispute.

"We have made progress in dealing with illegal Guatemalan settlements in Belizean territory, but there are elements in Guatemala that are still talking about the recovery of Belize," said Prime Minister Said Musa.

Heads of Government were informed that experts from the Pan American Institute of Geography and History (PAIGH) have determined the precise coordinates of the reference markers at Gracias a Dios, Garbutt's Falls and at the Mexican frontier in the north, the three points referred to in the 1859 "Convention between Great Britain and Guatemala relative to the Boundary of British Honduras"; and that they have drawn a line between these points on a map to show the line that divides the two countries.

On Thursday the Regional HIV/AIDS task force will convene it's  fifth meeting with the specific objective of formulating the plan of action for the European Commission-funded project aimed at strengthening the institutional response to HIV/AIDS/STI in the Caribbean. This meeting, which will be held at the Hilton Hotel in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, is also the first of the project advisory group.