A proposal by Prime Minister P J Patterson that December 8 each year will be celebrated as Caricom-Cuba Day was accepted by the heads of government of Cuba and the Caribbean Community at their summit meeting in Havana yesterday.
Prime Minister Patterson's proposal that the group formalises the Caricom-Cuba Summit has also been accepted and the meeting is to be held every three years.

The proposals by Patterson were made during discussions among the heads of government at the Havana International Conference Centre. The leaders focused on the theme, "The Integration of the Caribbean: Its Political, Economic and Social Dimensions, Challenges and Prospects".

Patterson said the annual observance and regular summit would serve to commemorate the past 30 years of co-operation and friendship between Caricom countries that began with the establishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba by Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago in 1972. They would also serve as a symbol and guiding light in the process of developing even greater levels of co-operation and practical and meaningful collaboration between Caricom countries and Cuba, Patterson added.

"While Caribbean economic integration was desirable in 1972, today it is an absolute imperative," Prime Minister Patterson stressed. He noted that God and nature had determined Cuba's location in the Caribbean and as such the country should be fully involved in the process of regional economic integration.

At the same time the Jamaican prime minister lamented the exclusion of Cuba from negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a situation which he said cannot be right. To underscore his point of one Caribbean, he said hurricanes affecting the region did not differentiate between English-speaking, Spanish-speaking or countries of any other linguistic groups but instead affected them all.

Patterson stressed that the countries of the Caribbean, facing similar problems, had to develop a united response to those challenges. He pointed to security threats, rising crime levels in many Caribbean societies fuelled by the drug trade and the region being used as a transshipment point between the source of drugs in the south and their markets in the north. He listed among the challenges facing the region, the realities of globalisation which had resulted in severe problems for many traditional industries like sugar.
In addition to the impediment of adverse terms of trade, Patterson said the Caribbean was still lagging behind in the age of technology and that the international system was rigged to prevent the countries of the region from catching up. He added that economic empowerment and poverty eradication demanded national as well as regional responses.

Patterson noted that while all Caribbean countries had achieved some modicum of development, the goals of sustained economic growth and employment creation to provide a better quality of life for the people had so far continued to be elusive. The integration process, the prime minister pointed out, must seek to improve competitiveness and export growth as well as capitalise on the natural advantages that the Caribbean enjoyed in areas such as tourism. He said the way forward must be people-centred, economically-driven and motivated by the political will of the people of the region.
The prime minister also highlighted the importance of human resources development amidst the challenge of the brain drain from the region and the need to preserve and protect the natural environment of the Caribbean.

The need for environmental preservation, he said, was accentuated against the background of the significant negative impact for the region of any such unfortunate occurrence as an oil spill or a mishap involving a vessel transporting nuclear waste from Europe to Japan. "Our environment is now under serious threat," he declared.
But the Jamaica prime minister said he does not share any pessimistic outlook that painted a bleak picture of the future of the Caribbean but had great hope for economic success.

Meanwhile, Patterson has lauded the Cuban government for what he described as its generosity in providing significant levels of human resource development and other assistance to the countries of the region. He added that the Caricom heads were pleased with the announcement by Cuban President Fidel Castro at yesterday's summit meeting, that Cuba would explore the possibility of creating greater linkages with other countries including those in the Caribbean within the context of the Cotonou Agreement between the African, Caribbean and Pacific States and the European Union.

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