A request for the funding of a $188 million marketing drive aimed at reviving the slumping Caribbean tourism sector, will be among several measures sought by key tourism stakeholders at the CARICOM Heads of Government meeting in July. Speaking at the 17th meeting of the Caribbean Media Exchange on Sustainable Tourism at the Isla Verde Holiday Inn in San Juan, Puerto Rico, St Lucia's Tourism and Civil Aviation Minister, Senator Allen Chastanet, lambasted the failure of successive Caribbean governments to tap into the potential of the tourism market. "This debate must stop. We need to step out of the box and take a very different perspective.

The time for talk is done," Chastanet passionately declared, saying he will resign from his portfolio if CARICOM leaders do not accept the $188 million proposal in July. Terestella Denton, executive director of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company also threatened to resign her post if regional governments failed to approve the $M marketing drive as she agreed with Chastanet's stance, saying the time for action is now.

Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretary General Edwin Carrington has called on the Community to respect and promote the principles of cultural diversity, and to ensure that the Community is a place built on mutual understanding and respect for all cultures. In his message to mark World Day for Cultural Diversity (21 May 2008), Carrington acknowledged the key role of cultural understanding, cooperation and awareness to the effective implementation of the Community’s flagship programme, the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME), asserting that “the foundation of our regionalism is located in the common historical and cultural heritage of the Caribbean.”

According to the Secretary General, the promotion of cultural diversity, safeguarding cultural heritage and developing creative industries were priority areas in CARICOM.“Culture is central to building a sense of community, of ensuring that the people of the Region feel connected and “intensely Caribbean,” and thereby forging a regional identity,” the CARICOM Secretary General said.

World Bank Director for the Caribbean Country Management Unit, Latin America and the Caribbean Region, Yvonne Tsikata, on an official visit to Guyana has pledged the institution’s continued support and assistance. Tsikata met with President Bharrat Jagdeo and visited Santa Mission, an Amerindian community in Region 3. “We talked at length about the World Bank’s relationship with Guyana and the Bank’s commitment to continue this good relationship and strengthen it further,” Tsikata said of the meeting with President Jagdeo.

Currently, the World Bank is discussing with Government officials the details of the upcoming Country Assistance Strategy which will cover a period of three years (2009-2012).

An international financing agency has given a big break to Haiti, a country whose dire internal situation has caused an exodus of migrants who end up in The Bahamas and the United States and whose recent challenges with food and fuel prices have sparked riots and the sacking of a prime minister. The Inter-American Development Bank [IDB] has decided to provide Haiti with US$27 million in grant and resources early in May. The aim is to assist the Haitian government with an emergency plan to contain food prices, create jobs and revive agricultural production.

The bank’s board of executive directors approved a new US$12.5 million grant and authorized the disbursement of US$14.5 million from a previously approved soft loan.

Jamaica's Ministry of National Security, in partnership with several other Caricom nations, will be seeking to sign memorandums of understanding with the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, towards the establishment of guidelines surrounding the reintroduction of criminal deportees to Jamaica.

According to a press release issued by the ministry of National Security last week, a decision was taken during the Fifth Meeting of the Caricom Council of Ministers Responsible for National Security and Law Enforcement (CONSLE), which preceded the recently concluded Caricom heads of government conference in Trinidad and Tobago, to seek to standardise the manner in which deportees being sent back to Caricom countries were to be treated.

The recognition of the need to focus on the governance of the various strands of the environment and natural resources issues was one of the most instructive outcomes of the meeting of officials of the Twenty-Fifth Special Meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Integration (COTED) on the Environment.

This was the view expressed by Dr Edward Greene, Assistant Secretary-General, Human and Social Development, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat as he spoke at the Opening Ceremony of the Ministerial Session on Thursday 17 April at the International Conference Centre, Georgetown, Guyana.

Haitian President Rene Preval has begun talks with representatives of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) for possible financial aid for his country, which is suffering from a food shortage crisis, according to news reaching here. Caricom's head and prime minister of Bahamas, Hubert Ingraham, said Friday in the country's capital Nassau that "we will establish the bases to strengthen Haiti's development with short, medium and long term goals."

Five people were killed last week in protests against food shortage in Haiti and Haitian Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was dismissed consequently.

Flour subsidies in Barbados and elsewhere in the Caribbean are an acceptable interim strategy but aren't a permanent solution to the food price crisis sweeping the region. What's really needed is a vigorous return to agriculture plus a regional food production plan that would put more Caribbean dishes on tables.

This advice comes from Byron Blake, a former top CARICOM economist who realised that Barbados and the Caribbean currently relied on costly imports from North America and Europe.

H.E. Edwin Carrington Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has acknowledged the "sterling contribution" professionals of the Caribbean have made to global environment management.

At the opening of the Twenty-Fifth Special Meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) on the environment, the Secretary-General congratulated the team of technical persons - Drs. Ulric Trotz, Anthony Chen, John Agard, and Leonard Nurse "who worked tirelessly on the Inter-Governmental Panel for Climate Change and who have been duly recognized for their contribution to this process with the award of a Nobel Peace Prize. "

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In the past few weeks alone, three Caribbean leaders hobnobbed with President Bush at the White House, first lady Laura Bush made her first trip to Haiti and two top Bush administration officials went island-hopping to push a joint security arrangement. Not so long ago, relations between the United States and the Caribbean were chilly at best, as Caribbean nations warmed up to China and oil-rich Venezuela and publicly squabbled with Washington over the war in Iraq, the 2004 ouster of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, deportees, and the lack of substantial U.S. aid to the region.

With a new crop of Caribbean leaders taking over in several island nations -- and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez facing internal and international difficulties -- the Bush administration is making a strong push to woo a region that has seen little attention from top policymakers.

The government of Guyana’s suggestions in relation to crime fighting solutions were welcomed and adopted as part of the 31 specific activities in 11 broad areas agreed to by Caricom Heads of Government at the recent special Summit in Trinidad and Tobago. Head of the Presidential Secretariat and Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon made this disclosure on Friday during his weekly post-Cabinet media briefing at the Office of the President.

“Almost all of the proposed interventions by Guyana were supported at the Ministerial level. We were so advised and when the Heads met, a large number of those interventions strongly supported by President Jagdeo were adopted and became part of the 31 specific tasks in the 11 areas to which all of the Heads were committed,” he said. Luncheon explained that the suggestions put forward by Guyana’s security heads at the recently held Commissioners and Chiefs-of-Staff meeting in Guyana were filtered at the summit since there were agreed to at the prior meeting.

Regional scientists are calling on Caribbean governments to help develop an emerging research and action agenda that will prepare the islands for the effects of climate change. A preliminary agenda was reached after three teams of scientists carried out extensive research on climate change scenarios and modeling, coastal, marine and terrestrial biodiversity in the region.

Fined tuned at a two-day workshop hosted by the Trinidad-based Caribbean Natural Resource Institute at the University of the West Indies, Mona, the agenda identifies gaps in existing capacity in the region to deal with the effects of climate change and outlines measures to correct those deficiencies. Dr. John Agard, chairman of the Environmental Management Authority of Trinidad and Tobago, says the agenda is long overdue.

A top United States (US) official has acknowledged that his country and the Caribbean need to come up with a better way to work together to deal with the narcotics and weapons problem facing both countries. US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Ambassador Thomas Shannon who is visiting a number of Caribbean countries this week, made the point after talks with President Bharrat Jagdeo on Wednesday.

Alluding to the 2007 Cricket World Cup period when information was shared between Caribbean countries and other nations, Shannon suggested that cooperation needs to be continued. "We did talk about the importance of improving our ability to share information and not just between Guyana and the US, but more broadly, and we took as the starting point the kind of cooperation that developed during the World Cup Cricket, especially in exchange of passenger lists and arrests that allowed the region to understand exactly who was travelling through the Caribbean," Shannon noted.

The merger of regional carriers LIAT and Caribbean Star doesn't seem to have brought all good news for intra-regional travel. St. Lucia's Minister of Tourism and Civil Aviation Senator Allen Chastanet has revealed that since the move visits across the Caribbean has declined by as much as 30 per cent. Pointing out that travel between various regional destinations has taken big dips, he recommended that creating a single air space with a central civil aviation authority could rectify the problem, making it easier for business and leisure travel.

"Trying to establish our own civil aviation authorities is to me ludicrous. We are all using different programmes to try to do the same thing, and none of the programmes are talking to each other, so there is no efficiency," he said as he addressed tourism officials and business executives at a Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry seminar on the topic 'Regional Air Travel - A Deterrent to Business - How Can We Fix It'.