FOLLOWING its decision to suspend all licences for prospecting for bauxite in the Cockpit Country, Cabinet has appointed a sub-committee to do a comprehensive review of its mining policy.

The ministers of finance and planning, agriculture and lands, national security, foreign affairs and foreign trade, information and development and the attorney general will sit on the committee.

"Cabinet felt that a broader representation of interests within the Jamaican society, from a Cabinet standpoint, should be appointed to oversee this project of finally determining our overall mining policy and the strategy for going forward," Information Minister Donald Buchanan said Monday.

Agriculture and Lands Minister Roger Clarke announced Saturday that he was moving to have the prospecting licences suspended, and that later this week he would be meeting with all the parties to come to some reasonable agreement.

At the same time, the minister announced that a third lease granted to an unnamed entity for the prospecting of limestone in the Cockpit Country was revoked.

The suspension of the leases signalled a minor victory for the Cockpit Country Stakeholders Group, which said the government had snubbed its requests for dialogue on the issue of prospecting and mining in the region.

But head of the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET), Diana McCaulay, said she was viewing the latest development with guarded optimism.

Opposition Leader Bruce Golding, in a statement, has said a government under his leadership would revoke all licences allowing prospecting in the Cockpit Country and declare the area a no-mining zone.

Golding criticised government's handling of the issue, calling it reckless and deceptive, and said that even if bauxite reserves were found in the Cockpit Country, a JLP government would not allow mining in the area.

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