Belize hosts CARICOM foreign ministers
According to Chief Information Officer Nuri Mohammed, the Prime Minister’s press conference this morning was cut short because of a previous commitment. That pressing engagement had to do with the fact that Belize is the venue of the tenth meeting of the CARICOM Council for Foreign and Community Relations. This week, Belize’s Foreign Minister Eamon Courtenay assumed chairmanship of COFCOR and accepted Belize’s mandate to act as a bridge between the Caribbean and Central America, especially in the areas of climate change, trade relations and integration. During his one year tenure, one of Courtenay’s most significant duties will come in June when CARICOM leaders head to Washington, D.C. to present the Caribbean’s case to allies in the United States and Europe.
Eamon Courtenay, Minister of Foreign Affairs
“The COFCOR is responsible for ensuring that as a region we are prepared for and ready to respond to international events. We must also be forward looking, anticipating how changes in the global environment will affect our countries and our region, and how best to strategically respond.”
“Our success will lie in the strengthening of our solidarity through our coordinated foreign policy. The conference on the Caribbean presents an important opportunity to engage not only with the government of the United States of America, not only with the United States Congress, not only with the international institutions headquartered in Washington, D.C., but also to unleash the potential for our diaspora that resides in the United States of America. We must be active participants in shaping an agenda for the conference which reflects our national interests. Trade issues, especially the future of our preferential access to the U.S. market, must be central to that discussion. Earlier this year the trade ministers of CARICOM and the ministers of Economy of Central America agreed to explore a free trade agreement between our two sub-regions. I believe that this was a milestone agreement which heralds the beginning of a new area of cooperation between the Caribbean Community and Central America.”
Tomorrow, the CARICOM foreign ministers will be joined in Belize by their Central American counterparts and on Saturday heads of government from the two sub-regions will gather for a one-day summit.
