MONTEGO BAY, JAMAICA – United States Trade Representative Robert Zoellick convened an informal meeting of Trade Ministers, from selected Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) countries, in Maryland, June 12, 2003. Ministers from thirteen countries attended, drawn from all regions of the hemisphere. The main focus of discussion was on the goals of the FTAA and the core elements needed to achieve economic success and enhance political support for the FTAA.
MONTEGO BAY, JAMAICA – CARIFORUM member states’ senior officials and experts, with responsibility for trade, and specialists from regional and international bodies are meeting in Montego Bay, Jamaica. The four-day meeting will prepare the region for the Fifth World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Cancun, Mexico, September 10 to 14. The Ministerial Conference marks the half-way mark for Doha Agenda negotiations launched in Doha, Qatar, November 2001.
My presence here today as Prime Minister is the consequence of an electoral choice that is without precedent in the post-independence history of my country.
It focuses my mind on the fact that we live in unprecedented times – in a world caught up with difficult and dangerous new tensions, and confronted with blistering and bewildering change that makes it often very difficult for our people to see the future.
At its Fourteenth Inter-Sessional Meeting (in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, 14-15 February 2003), the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community “considered the situation developing over Iraq and expressed their profound concern at the escalation of global tensions and their grave implications for the preservation of international peace and security.”
Since then there has been an outbreak of war. The Caribbean Community regrets the resulting loss of life on all sides.
CHRIST CHURCH, BARBADOS – A College of Negotiators Meeting will be convened in Kingston, Jamaica from March 31 to April 1, 2003. The session will finalize CARICOM’s preparation for the 13th Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Trade Negotiation Committee (TNC) Meeting in Puebla, Mexico from April 8 to 11. The College comprises Lead and Alternate Lead Negotiators representing CARICOM in the FTAA’s nine Negotiating Groups and one Ad Hoc Group on Rules of Origin (an ad hoc group of the Negotiating Group on Market Access).
CHRIST CHURCH, BARBADOS – Hon. P.J. Patterson, Prime Minister of Jamaica, lauded the RNM for “the tremendous work being done” in relation to the Region’s participation in WTO, FTAA and ACP/EU negotiations. He was reporting to the Fourteenth Inter-Sessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community, held from the 14th to 15th of February in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, in his capacity as Chairman of the Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on External Negotiations.
On 25 September 2002, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat received a Diplomatic Note dated 24 September 2002 from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Jamaica informing that the Government of Jamaica had “indicated to the Government of the United States of America its intention to resume bilateral ‘Open Skies’ negotiation on suitable dates between 21 and 30 October 2002.”
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.
The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has despatched a three-member team to Jamaica as part of the International Observers to the electoral process in that country. General elections are being held in Jamaica on Wednesday 16 October, 2002.
The team is led by Ambassador Colin Granderson, Assistant Secretary-General, Foreign Policy and Community Relations, CARICOM Secretariat and includes Dr S.R. Surujbally, Chairman of the Elections Commission of Guyana, and Mr Carson Raggie, Chief Elections Officer, Saint Lucia.
At a meeting at the Hilton Hotel, Kingston Jamaica, on 18-19 February 2002, Health Ministers of the Caribbean countries held a successful round of discussions with representatives of leading pharmaceutical Companies on access to care for people living with HIV/AIDS in the Region. This meeting was the first stage in a process and comes close on the heels of Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica developing their own national plans in partnership with United Nations agencies and the pharmaceutical industry.