BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - Thirteen of the 15 member countries of the CARIFORUM group - the Caribbean Community (Caricom) and the Dominican Republic - have agreed to sign off on the controversial Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) concluded with the European Union.

Caricom leaders, at a special meeting held here yesterday to hammer out a common position on the EPA, agreed to formally sign the full agreement next month, despite not having Guyana and Haiti aboard.

Guyana stuck with its earlier decision to sign the "trade in goods only" segment of the agreement, while Haiti said it would not commit itself to a signing date at this time.

The Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados (host for the special summit and expected venue for the formal signing), Suriname, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis, The Bahamas, Belize, as well as Grenada and St Lucia all agreed to sign the agreement. The latter two had earlier said they were not ready to sign but reversed that stand following yesterday's meeting.

At separate media briefings here yesterday, both Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo, Prime Minister of Jamaica Bruce Golding, and Prime Minister David Thompson of Barbados made conscious efforts to downplay the failure to reach a consensus on a collective sign-off on the EPA, and stressed the "respect for the sovereign right" of member states to determine what they regarded as being in their best interest.

At the same time, they expressed regret that having negotiated collectively as CARIFORUM and concluded negotiations together, they could not have reached a common position to sign off on the EPA together.

President Jagdeo said that some of his colleagues explained that they had arrived for the meeting with mandates from either their cabinets or parliament and so far as Guyana was concerned, he had a 'consensus mandate' from a national consultation of stakeholders as well as his cabinet, adding that while he was not opposed to a compromise, he could not vary from a fundamental position that his government had been promoting.

The EPA is an agreement which aims to, among other things, remove barriers to trade and enhance co-operation in all areas related to trade.

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