(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Prime Minister of Barbados, the Rt. Honourable Owen Arthur speaking today 28 June, to the Symposium, Caribbean Connect, on the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) in Barbados posited that the obligations under the CSME “were not imposed on us by any colonial master nor any supranational extra-regional institution. They were negotiated in good faith and agreed by the respective countries in their capacity as sovereign States.”

The Prime Minister said that while acknowledging the considerable challenges that respective Caribbean States experience in meeting their Treaty obligations to be part of the CSME, “they reflect and embody the exercise of our sovereignty in pursuit of higher levels of domestic and regional achievement. It becomes impossible to establish any kind of relationship of lasting value if countries, on their own volition, enter treaties and then find reasons not to comply with them.”

He added, “I can this morning safely say that those of us who have responsibilities to facilitate the creation of the CSME- and mine have been onerous - have been sparing no effort to ensure our CSME does not emerge as a permanent coalition of unequals.”

Prime Minister Arthur acknowledged that the issues surrounding the participation of the OECS countries in the CSME constitute a challenge which must be sensitively and sensibly met on all sides, and urged the Community to continue to accommodate the special circumstances of individual cases, and to accept nuance and flexibility in the way in which the best conceived designs are applied in the real world.

“This, however”, he says,” does not create a licence for individual states to seek to impose on the implementation of a regional programme, which was negotiated and agreed by all in good faith, unilateral conditions which go beyond the spirit and scope of the Treaty which binds us.”