MANY Jamaicans are awaiting indications as to whether our attendance at the Summit of the Americas was a waste of time and money. This is because the impact of these international meetings on Jamaica is often not fully appreciated.

The Summit of the Americas, a meeting of the countries of the western hemisphere at the highest political level, was first held in December 1994 in Miami and subsequently in Chile, Canada, Argentina, Colombia, and Trinidad and Tobago. The Seventh Summit has just concluded in Panama. The summit has been criticised for not resulting in any tangible outcome and that has raised the perennial question of whether it was a success or failure. The answer to this question, however, depends on the criteria used to evaluate success or failure.

These meetings take place every three to four years and provide an opportunity for both multilateral discussion and bilateral meetings. It is often difficult to get a consensus, especially since the subjects of deliberation include every possible topic. The result has been that the outcome lacks any specificity and the decisions never get implemented. The early summits, which were built around the Free Trade Area of the Americas — which later collapsed — were able to issue a communiqué which stated common goals.

Starting with the summit in Port of Spain, Trinidad, it has not been possible to agree on a communiqué because the summit was viewed by Venezuela and those countries that join ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, as a US initiative. ALBA consists of 11 member countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Grenada, Nicaragua, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela.

However, the fact that no communiqué was issued does not mean that the summit of the Americas in Panama was a failure and a waste of time and money. On the contrary, there were important successes. It was the first time that all countries in the hemisphere attended, with Cuba being involved also for the first time. This was a major change and the first major step towards the reintegration of Cuba into the hemispheric processes and institutions.

The presidents of the United States and Cuba met and held a civil dialogue for the first time in over 50 years. This was a historic occasion which is an important step in the long overdue normalisation of relations between the two countries. The results of that process will have profound political and economic effects for the entire hemisphere and, in particular, the Caribbean.

Cuba made a big breakthrough in that President Obama yesterday announced that that country would be erased from the list of terrorist countries, one of the sticking points in the ongoing normalisation negotiations and which was discussed at the Panama summit with Cuban President Raul Castro.

The summit, like many multilateral fora, was noteworthy for the bilateral meetings which took place in the margins of the full conference. For small countries that cannot afford the cost of diplomatic representation throughout the world, nor the expense of travel to distant capitals, it is an opportunity to engage several heads of government in a short space of time.

Attending these multi-country confabs is good value for money.