PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC) - Grenada's Prime Minister Tillman Thomas has thrown his support behind the idea of a political union in the Caribbean.

Thomas, who arrived here Wednesday for an official two-day visit at the invitation of Prime Minister Patrick Manning, said the region needs to seriously pursue the ideals of integration.

"From Grenada's standpoint, we would support any move to integrate the region. We believe the time has come for us to really be under one umbrella, not only in the economic sense, (but) also in the long-run in the political sense, and we need to take the necessary steps to get this going," Thomas told local media here Wednesday.

He will participate in a mini-summit today involving Manning; prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr Ralph Gonsalves; Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo; St Lucia's leader, Stephenson King; as well as the Barbados foreign minister, Christopher Sinckler. They will look at the way forward for the regional integration movement.

"The whole idea is to bring all the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries and get them involved in the integration process," said Thomas, who became prime minister in July after his National Democratic Congress (NDC) defeated Keith Mitchell's New National Party (NNP).

Both Manning and Gonsalves have mooted the idea of a political union in the region to cope with the challenges of the global environment.

The region experimented with a political union in the 1950s in the form of the West Indies Federation which failed.

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