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TRADE: Caribbean Vows to Take Sugar Fight to EU Doorstep

Peter Richards

CASTRIES, Jul 7 2005 (IPS) - Visibly upset at what they consider the "unilateral" position of the European Union, Caribbean leaders have announced plans to mount various missions to Europe in a bid to reverse the EU’s decision to slash prices for sugar.

The leaders ended their annual summit here on Wednesday night, and the gathering provided the first opportunity to discuss the European decision as a group.

St. Lucia’s Prime Minister Kenny Anthony said that Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo would lead a mission to Europe "within the next few weeks" to lobby against the European position on the Sugar Protocol.

Anthony, the chairman of the 15-member Caribbean Community (Caricom), said "urgency" is the key word in the work of the mission, which will visit a number of European states, including Spain, that oppose the revised sugar protocol. The changes call for a 40 percent reduction in the price paid to African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) sugar producers starting in 2006.

The Caribbean leaders are insisting that under the existing Sugar Protocol negotiated in the 1970s, they were guaranteed "indefinite access" to the European market after ACP sugar producers agreed to accept lower than market prices for the sale of their product

Jagdeo, who like Jamaica’s Prime Minister, PJ Patterson, had written to Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair on the issue, has slammed the new European’s position as "very unilateral".

Jagdeo, the region’s main spokesman on agriculture, met with Blair, Chancellor Gordon Brown and other British officials and said "the sense we are getting is that Britain is pushing the reforms."

He said it was hypocritical "to say you need to help poor countries" by giving debt relief and at the same time imposing measures that would erode their economies.

"One on hand you give us aid, on the other hand you take it away," he said.

He said using the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ruling that favoured the challenge by Brazil, Australia, Thailand for justifying the cuts to the ACP states was wrong, since the "WTO ruling was definitive that Europe should keep its commitment to the ACP".

"Sugar means a lot to the Caribbean," Jagdeo said, referring to his own country’s efforts to upgrade the industry, at a cost of millions of dollars.

St. Kitts-Nevis Prime Minister Denzil Douglas, whose twin-island federation has decided to stop growing sugar for export, said that his country was not prepared to accept the European position.

He said he found it difficult to come to terms with a "situation where an entire country that had been involved in this exercise for more than 300 years simply to be told it is no longer competitive and so you have to simply withdraw."

"St. Kitts-Nevis therefore has made a strong plea to this conference requesting support for the transition exercise and asking for assistance from the European Union," he said.

"We think it is an obligation for them to provide the necessary assistance and to transform the economy and just not simply exist from the sugar industry from my country."

Sugar aside, the region’s leaders also said they supported the position of the G4 countries – India, Brazil, Germany and Japan – regarding the reform of the United Nations.

Ambassador Paulette Bethel, the Bahamas’ permanent representative to the U.N., said that the Caribbean had expressed strong support for development issues in the reform process as well as an extension of the Security Council based on the "principle of rotation so that small states like the Caribbean can have a chance to serve."

Jamaica’s Patterson was also critical of the existing role of the U.N. General Assembly, describing it as "a little more than a debating chamber. It can’t take effective decisions on a range of issues."

For once, Haiti did not emerge as a major agenda item at the four-day summit, even though during the ceremonial opening, Suriname’s President Runaldo Venetiaan said the political developments and security situation in the former French colony "remain of great concern".

"We observe with sadness an increase of political instability and deterioration of the security environment in the run up to municipal, legislative and presidential elections," he said, criticising the slow disbursement of financial and technical aid pledged to the country.

Venetiaan said it raised "questions about the real commitment of the international community to alleviate the social and economic suffering of the Haitian people."

Anthony said that the summit had reiterated an earlier decision to assist Haiti in its upcoming elections by providing technical personnel under the umbrella of the United Nations.

Haiti’s interim administration was not invited to the summit, consistent with the earlier decision of the Caribbean leaders that the return of Haiti to the councils of Caricom would depend on the outcome of free and fair elections.

Haiti’s democratically elected President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, who is now living in exile in South Africa, was removed from office in February last year and he has accused the United States and France of engineering his removal, a claim that has been denied by Washington.

Anthony said that while the Haiti situation did not feature prominently at the summit, it should not be interpreted as a disengagement from Haiti.

"The overriding condition remains that Haiti must return to the democratic fold before it could be readmitted to the corridors of Caricom," he said.