BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — Caribbean Community (Caricom) states did not issue their planned statement yesterday condemning the US-led war on Iraq, after three member countries tried to water down the language used in the declaration.

According to Observer sources, Antigua and Barbuda, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and The Bahamas wanted “unfortunate dilutions” to the statement which was supposed to have been issued at yesterday’s final day of a two-day emergency session of the United Nations Security Council, called to discuss the war.

Cracks apparently started appearing in the Caricom position Wednesday night after the three countries sought variations to the draft prepared by Jamaica at the request of some community partners.

The changes, Observer sources said, would have required more time for “general acceptance”.

Yesterday, Jamaica’s foreign minister, K D Knight, declined to go beyond a brief comment when questioned about the collapse of the Caricom position.

“We were unable to come to a common position in time and, therefore, we (Jamaica) made our own statement before the UN Security Council,” Knight said.

In its statement to the Security Council on Wednesday night, Jamaica called on the UN to use its influence to broker a cease-fire and denounced Washington’s and London’s doctrines of pre-emptive strike and regime change as having no place in international relations.

“The Security Council must remain the source of legitimacy for any collective action and it should not be compromised or undermined by any new doctrines or policies inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations,” Jamaica’s UN ambassador, Stafford Neil, said at the council session.

American and British troops invaded Iraq a week ago, on the orders of President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein.

Both men accuse Saddam of developing weapons of mass destruction and defying UN resolutions to disarm. They started the war, that has so far claimed more than 350 lives, when the Security Council refused to sanction the military action.

Yesterday, Knight rejected as “false”, a report in yesterday’s Observer that he had no knowledge of a US State Department correspondence to Caribbean governments urging them not to attend a proposed meeting of the UN General Assembly that would condemn the US-led war.

The State Department message was relayed verbally in some cases and in written form in others, to the Caribbean countries that attended last month’s Non-Aligned Summit in Malaysia where the idea of the General Assembly meeting was mooted.

The Americans were apparently anxious not to receive further criticism for the war which has proven highly unpopular worldwide and to which Caricom governments had expressed strong opposition in February at a summit in Trinidad.

At least two foreign ministers said yesterday that while the original plan for a second statement had been suspended, they could not say how soon the matter will be revisited, or whether other countries that remain committed to the collective February 15 statement may do as Jamaica and make their own individual statements.