MONTEGO BAY, St James – Jamaica’s deputy foreign minister Delano Franklin says security for next month’s ICC Cricket World Cup is paramount, and organisers here in Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean cannot afford to take any chances.

He said, too, that regional governments cannot be short-sighted in their approach to organising and delivering a world-class tournament.

Senator Franklin, who was speaking at Monday’s press launch of the St James Hosting Committee for Cricket World Cup at the Pier One Restaurant here, said regional states had to take into consideration all the possibilities and put in place the necessary security measures for the games.

Responding to criticism of the imposition of the Caricom visa and the passing into law of the Sunset legislation last year, Franklin said it was not a decision taken lightly.

“.We want to see business grow, but in today’s climate, security becomes extremely paramount,” said the junior foreign minister.

“We brought in international partners, we sat down and said in order to make, as humanely possible, CWC 2007 free of incidents, these are some of the things which we would need to do, and we are putting them in place one-by-one,” said Franklin.

Organisers across the Caribbean, he added, were called on to constantly balance the freedom of movement of individuals with serious security risk.

“.What would happen to the tourist trade and to Jamaica if, God forbid, some thing untoward would happen during the course of the games and after investigations, to make it worse, it was found that we did not do something that we ought to have done?”

Franklin said all the nine regional states hosting the games had an obligation to ensure adequate provision of security, which meant that once certain measures were in place it would impact on movement, “and in that context I would wish for you to understand the imposition of visa requirement”.

A successful and incident-free staging of CWC 2007, Franklin said, would have tremendous spin-offs as more persons would choose Jamaica and the Caribbean to stage international events.