(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) CARICOM Secretary-General His Excellency Edwin Carrington is participating in a two-day meeting of the G77 High Level Panel of Eminent Personalities on a Development Platform for the South which is taking place in Antigua and Barbuda on 29-30 April 2008.

The G77 which comprises 130 countries of the developing world and China is preparing for the United Nations High Level Conference on South-South Co-operation scheduled for Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2009. The outcome of the preparatory meetings will be the Development Platform for the South which will from the basis of the discussions at the Argentina Conference.

Among the eminent personalities at the meeting are the former Prime Minister of Jamaica, the Most Honourable Percival Patterson and the former President of Sri Lanka, the Honourable Chakira Banadanaraike Kumaratunga.

Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, the Honourable Baldwin Spencer, in a statement at the opening session of the meeting, pointed to a new dynamic in North-South relations which saw different approaches, premises, conditions, and expectations. The Prime Minister called on the North to honour their commitments to Overseas Development Aid and for support by the United Nations to support the South-South process.

Mr Patterson, in his statement, alluded to an acute crisis of development in many parts of the world. He cited climate change, the energy crisis, and financial and monetary crises as problems which afflict both the developed and developing world.

The opening session was also addressed by Ms Kumaratunga and Ambassador Nassir Abdulaziz- Al-Nasser, Permanent Representative of Quatar to the United Nations and President of the UN General Assembly High Level Committee on South-South Co-operation.