The Week in Europe
By David Jessop

On April 7 and 8 the third UK/Caribbean Forum will take place in Georgetown,
Guyana. The event will be opened jointly by the President of Guyana, Bharrat
Jagdeo and the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw.

Those present will include Foreign Ministers from across the Caribbean and
Ministers and senior officials from a number of British Government
departments. The meeting will consider a wide-ranging agenda covering most
aspects of the political, economic and development relationship between
Britain and the Caribbean region.

As with all such events there will be differences of opinion, but the common
theme running throughout is expected to be that of partnership and the
identification of practical ways in which the UK/Caribbean relationship
might be made more mutually beneficial.

Although in private some Caribbean Governments remain uneasy about Britain's
stance towards the region, there are broader signs of a new realism. The
estrangement of the Caribbean in the early years of Britain's Labour
Government is turning to a more pragmatic form of engagement, albeit in a
limited, different way to the past because of the difficult circumstances of
changing Caribbean economic ties with Europe.

It is scarcely a secret that in the first year of Britain's Labour
administration, relations between the UK and the Anglophone Caribbean almost
became detached. Caribbean heads felt slighted at the way they were treated.
They wondered why it was that they had enjoyed a better relationship with a
Conservative government when New Labour was, in most respects, more
politically attuned to their way of thinking. They noted with alarm that the
world economic structure was changing but that even under Labour, Britain, a
country on which they had previously relied, pursued policies with Europe
and the US that seemed not in the region's long-term interests.

Since then much water has passed under the bridge. With the successive help
of three sympathetic junior Foreign and Commonwealth Office Ministers and a
resumed dialogue with the British Prime Minister, some of the doubts have
been assuaged. Although there remains still a feeling of disappointment with
Britain in many Caribbean capitals and a desire for greater substance in
place of rhetoric, there is a willingness to modernise and better define
once intimate ties in a manner that remains special.

In this light, most parties expect the discussion at this Forum to be
practical.

In Georgetown, Caribbean Ministers will be seeking to put flesh on the bones
of promises made by Britain to provide support in international trade
negotiations. They will be hoping to identify, for instance, the ways in
which Britain might enhance co-operation on issues as wide ranging as
matters related to security and narcotics interdiction though to the serious
HIV/Aids epidemic affecting the region.

They will want to see what support London might offer to attract investment
and enhance the development of the tourism sector. In this, they will seek
more than cosmetic indications of interest from Britain. For example, it is
likely that they will ask Britain to actively intervene within the European
Union to have the European Commission deliver agreed programmes essential to
the economic transition of specific sectors within dramatically shorter time
scales if the industries concerned are to survive.

For its part, aside from the discussion of political issues, Britain will
want the region to come forward with specific proposals on the ways in which
it might support Caribbean interests in Europe and in international trade
negotiations. It will do so not from the perspective of challenging the
European consensus on future regional arrangements with Europe or the
imperatives necessity of trade liberalisation. Rather it is likely to seek
the identification of practical ways in which the UK might use its influence
to support approaches that recognise the transitional needs of the region.

One measure of the United Kingdom's interest is its willingness to act as a
catalyst to promote alternative approaches to development. This reflects a
break with the development assistance led solutions of the past and a
recognition of the role that the private sector and civil society on both
sides of the Atlantic have to play in the process of change.

On March 21 Britain took an important step down this road. Then the UK
Foreign and Commonwealth Office hosted a one day conference in London for
some 200 Caribbean and UK participants to discuss the future development of
organic and fair trade production in the Caribbean.

The discussion centred on the banana industry. It enabled producers and
organic farmers from across the region to hear from the large British
supermarket chains, marketing specialists and others, including the Prince
of Wales, about the prospects and the difficulties of the Caribbean
involving itself in these niche markets.

The meeting recognised that the organic market was not a panacea for the
problems of Caribbean agriculture, that both markets were small and had
little future unless the infrastructure, transport systems and revenues
connected with the vastly larger regular trade in bananas remained in place.


In many respects the conference posed more questions than it answered.
Despite this it represented a small but practical step forward, catalysing
thinking, potentially putting together producers and buyers, enabling the
region to help itself.

France and Spain have both held summits in the region in recent years but
their promise has so far failed to meet expectations. If the third
UK/Caribbean Forum is to reflect Britain's desire for a positive mature
engagement, both sides will have to set aside the perceptions of the past
and discuss honestly, practical forward looking solutions that can be
delivered rapidly.

David Jessop is the Executive Director of the Caribbean Council for Europe
and can be contacted at [log in to unmask]
March 22nd, 2002

Note to Editors: There will be no Week in Europe column for the two weeks
over the Easter break. The next column will be sent on April 11. Because of
communications problems last week some newspapers did not have receive the
column on sugar dated March 15 until March 19. You may prefer to run that
column this weekend and this column on the UK Forum on Easter Sunday.