‘We told Caricom’
Transport Minister Robert Pickersgill has denied that Jamaica entered into an Open Skies agreement with the United States without the knowledge of Caricom and said that Kingston had actually offered to assist other members of the regional trading bloc in any further talks with the Americans.
Pickersgill was responding to a Rickey Singh column published in the November 10 Sunday Observer in which Singh said that the Jamaica/US Open Skies pact caught Caricom by surprise.
“Secretary-General Edwin Carrington of the Caricom Secretariat was both surprised and disturbed, explaining that if an explanation existed, then perhaps it was in the mail, as he was yet to be officially informed,” Singh wrote in his weekly column.
However, Pickersgill insisted that “Caricom was formally notified by Diplomatic Note dated September 24, 2002 by Jamaica’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade that Jamaica would pursue bilateral discussions with the United States of America and that we would be prepared to assist Caricom countries in any further negotiations with the United States which they may wish to pursue and to bear in mind some of the concerns expressed by Caricom in the context of our own negotiations”.
Last month, Kingston and Washington announced that they had initialled an Open Skies agreement that will effectively give American and Jamaican airlines unrestricted access to each other’s markets.
The pact has not yet been officially signed. However, upon its entry into force, it will provide for immediate implementation of nearly all Open Skies provisions, including substantially open route rights, unrestricted capacity and frequencies, and code-sharing opportunities.
The agreement also contains a transitional annex which provides for implementation of certain rights relating to passenger charter services within a few years.
It will effectively replace an all-cargo Open Skies agreement reached between Jamaica and the US in October 2000, a month after American and Caribbean aviation experts met in Kingston for two days to discuss the complex issues that could hamper a general Open Skies pact with the Caribbean.
That proposal, made by the US, has been on the agenda since 1997 and resulted in the formation of a Caricom Negotiating Team headed by Dr Kenneth Rattray.
According to Pickersgill, the Rattray team, in 1998, submitted a final draft Caricom proposal to the United States in response to their proposal.
It was that collective Caricom approach to the idea that Singh accused Jamaica of abandoning.
But Pickersgill, in his response, said that those talks had literally stalled. “It was clear,” he said “that the United States had formidable problems with some of the Caricom proposals and was, therefore, disinterested in pursuing talks on that basis.”
He said that it was against this background that the Government of The Bahamas formally notified Caricom on March 13, 2001 that it would independently pursue open skies negotiations with the United States.
Pickersgill also noted that Belize is a party to an Open Skies Agreement with the USA and said that Jamaica was seeking to explore further liberalisation opportunities for increased market access into and through the United States in view of the limited access permitted under a 1979 Agreement between both countries.
That 1979 pact, Pickersgill explained, went beyond the Caricom proposal and many of the features were reflected in the standard US draft Open Skies Agreement. Therefore, he said, “adjustments would have to be made to the Caricom draft so as to take the 1979 Provisions into account in the conclusion of any bilateral Open Skies Agreement between Jamaica and the United States”.
He said that these proposals were based upon recognition that notwithstanding any agreement that may have been arrived at multilaterally, each Caricom state would be required to sign bilaterally with the USA, because adjustments would have to be made to any agreement in order to take into consideration special circumstances of individual states.
Added Pickersgill: “In practical terms, the liberalised regime, which existed between Jamaica and the United States under the 1979 Agreement, meant that the move to an Open Skies regime would not require a quantum leap. The basic framework of the existing 1979 regime was that of a fair competition environment with the following provisions among others:
(a) No limits on the number of airlines that could be designed by any party;
(b) Unrestricted capacity of frequencies on the specified routes (with a limit of ten points in the USA for Jamaican air carriers);
(c) Fifth freedom rights (traffic between Jamaica or the United States and a third country but limited to specified routes) including routes through Jamaica to the Caribbean;
(d) Liberal charter arrangements;
(e) Provisions for carriers to self-handle their passengers and cargo or to select among competing agents for such services;
(f) Provisions designed to assure standards of safety and security; and
(g) Provisions for dispute settlement.
But under that agreement, Pickersgill said, Air Jamaica had reached the limits of its expansion with respect to the 10 points to the US, and the future development and planning of Jamaica’s aviation needs, with particular reference to trade and tourism, required further liberalisation of the market opportunities.
“In submitting Jamaica’s formal notification to Caricom, we were following the precedence established by The Bahamas and Belize and the understanding that even within the framework of the stalled Caricom proposal for negotiations, the special needs of individual countries would be negotiated bilaterally,” Pickersgill said.
“I therefore find Mr Singh’s article disturbing, misleading, surprising and strange.”
He said that similar to the 1979 agreement, the new pact does not limit the number of airlines that may be designated by either country.
The minister insisted that Jamaica maintained its Caricom perspective in the negotiations and that the Jamaican delegation proposed that in addition to the right of each party to designate carriers that are substantially owned and effectively controlled by homeland nationals, Jamaica should have the right to designate carriers that are substantially owned and effectively controlled by member states or nationals of Caricom.
This, he said, was done “to recognise the principle of Community of Interest adopted by ICAO for the benefit of developing countries”.
Added Pickersgill: “In this connection, it is to be noted that under the principle of Community of Interest, the United States has recognised Air Jamaica as the national carrier of Barbados and St Lucia. It was therefore reassuring to record that this recognition would continue. The agreed principle of the Community of Interest certainly belies any implication that by signing a bilateral Open Skies agreement with the USA, Jamaica has intrinsically undermined any possible future agreement by Caricom states to establish a regional airline.
He said that the American delegation assured the Jamaican team that the US Department of Transportation would continue to be amenable on a case-by-case basis to licensing carriers with non-homeland ownership and control interest.