Regional Leaders Pave the Way for Caribbean Common Market

Caribbean leaders have agreed to remove the last of the restrictions blocking the free movement of money, goods and services in the region--among the final steps toward the creation of a European-style single market, the prime minister of Barbados said.

Caribbean nations will begin phasing out the restrictions in December, Prime Minister Owen Arthur said Friday at the close of the annual Caribbean summit, which began Tuesday.

Arthur said the changes agreed upon will better prepare the region for integration into the global economy and the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a proposed duty-free zone that would stretch from Alaska to Argentina.

The idea of a Caribbean common market was originally floated in 1989 and was supposed to have been enacted by 1993.

“We are eight years late,” Arthur said.

Caribbean leaders also met with Mexican President Vicente Fox, who announced that his country would double its funding for technical and scientific programs in the Caribbean.

“I come here today on behalf of Mexico to reaffirm our commitment to the Caribbean Basin,” he said.

Fox’s offer came during Mexico’s quiet campaign to win a coveted seat on the U.N. Security Council. Mexico is vying with the Dominican Republic for a rotating council seat that has been held by Jamaica since 1999. The 189-member U.N. General Assembly will make its choice at the end of the year.

Leaders also agreed to work together to combat illnesses, including AIDS, which has a particularly high incidence rate in the Caribbean. Other problems facing the region include drug trafficking and the disappearance of preferential trade deals with Europe.

“The region is no longer of strategic value to the Americans or anyone else,” the Stabroek News, a Guyanese newspaper, said in an editorial.