Caricom, US agree to “21st century Cooperation Framework”

Heads of Gov­ern­ment of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty and US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio have agreed to a “Co­op­er­a­tion Frame­work ap­pro­pri­ate to the 21st cen­tu­ry to sup­port the needs and in­ter­ests of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty and the USA.”

This was the con­clu­sion in a joint state­ment re­leased on Fri­day morn­ing.

The meet­ing, which took place on Wednes­day in St Kitts and Nevis where the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing place, ad­dressed is­sues of in­ter­est to the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty and the Unit­ed States. Dis­cus­sions fo­cused on se­cu­ri­ty, mi­gra­tion, trade, in­vest­ment, dis­as­ter re­cov­ery, hu­man de­vel­op­ment and tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance. The par­ties agreed to pur­sue a Co­op­er­a­tion Frame­work suit­ed to cur­rent needs.

The state­ment said the frame­work would in­clude a struc­tured Mi­gra­tion Pro­gramme and mech­a­nisms for se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion. It would al­so ad­dress trade and in­vest­ment, dis­as­ter re­cov­ery, hu­man de­vel­op­ment and tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance.

The par­ties not­ed the ties be­tween Cari­com and the Unit­ed States, in­clud­ing diplo­mat­ic and eco­nom­ic re­la­tions and co­op­er­a­tion on se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters. They agreed to con­tin­ue en­gage­ment aimed at strength­en­ing co­or­di­na­tion be­tween the re­gion and the Unit­ed States.

The sit­u­a­tion in Cu­ba was al­so raised. The par­ties ac­knowl­edged the hu­man­i­tar­i­an is­sues fac­ing Cu­ba and the po­ten­tial im­pact on the Re­gion. Cari­com in­di­cat­ed its will­ing­ness to par­tic­i­pate in ef­forts aimed at ad­dress­ing the hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in Cu­ba, while main­tain­ing re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty.

The state­ment said the last for­mal en­gage­ment of this scale be­tween the Cari­com and the Unit­ed States took place al­most 50 years ago dur­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan.

The meet­ing forms part of on­go­ing en­gage­ment be­tween the Cari­com and the Unit­ed States on mat­ters af­fect­ing the re­gion. Ac­cord­ing to the joint state­ment, both sides agreed that struc­tured di­a­logue would sup­port co­or­di­na­tion on shared in­ter­ests and pol­i­cy pri­or­i­ties.

No fur­ther de­tails were pro­vid­ed on time­lines for the pro­posed Co­op­er­a­tion Frame­work or the next round of dis­cus­sions.