GUYANA: Region at odds over Agenda of Americas Summit

GEORGETOWN, Nov 09 (IPS) - Sharp differences have arisen between Guyana and its Caribbean colleagues over the process being used by the United States for refining an agenda for a key year-end summit with U.S. President, Bill Clinton.

"We do not agree with the assertion that the United States government is imposing its own agenda on the rest of the hemispheric participants for the summit," Guyana's foreign minister, Clement Rohee told reporters at a press conference Wednesday.

Rohee says Guyana's government disagrees with some of its Caribbean colleagues that the U.S. was "bulldozing" its way and "imposing" its own agenda for the December 9-11 summit of the Americas to be held in Miami.

But the minister's comments contrast sharply with that of assistant secretary general of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), Byron Blake.

"There are major concerns with the process of preparing for the summit. We're just five weeks away from the summit and the nature of the documents which would have emerged from that summit is still not very clear...," Blake says.

But Rohee says his government has no quarrel with the process which the Guyana-based Caricom secretariat has criticised.

"I think the consultative process has been productive and going on even up to now... so that the notion that there has been some kind of imposition on the part of the United States trying to bulldoze its way through, or what they (Caricom) would wish to discuss or not have discussed in Miami... I don't think it has any foundation," says Rohee.

The foreign minister says his government has already submitted its suggestions for agenda issues to Clinton as well as its response to the draft agenda.

Regional leaders have been saying a few of their concerns such as the debt question have been ignored in the agenda sent to them by the United States.

"There continues to be some issues which are excluded -- the whole question of debt -- which has been one which Caribbean governments are very concerned about and that has not been included either in the draft of principles and the plan of action," said Kenneth Hall, deputy Caricom secretary general.

The 13 members of Caricom with a total population of 5.5 million have a combined foreign debt of some 9.2 billion dollars.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service