President Hip?lito Mej?a will travel to Montego Bay, Jamaica tomorrow, Thursday, 3 July, to participate in the four-day Caribbean Community Summit that starts today. The visit comes after the return of Caribbean ministers today from their meeting in Washington with US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, against the backdrop of his recent signal for special and differential treatment for Caricom countries in the hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), as reported by the Jamaican Observer newspaper.
The Dominican Republic had recently redirected its trade agreement talks away from supporting the Caricom position to openly comply with the requirements made by the United States, in an attempt to secure a bilateral FTA with the United States. Progress on these Dominican negotiations, however, seems to have stalled.
The summit underway will bring together Caribbean heads of government and state to focus on global issues of trade and aid, the future of the 15-member Caricom (in which the Dominican Republic has observer status) and issues such as intra-regional trade, air transportation and fishing. Caribbean news reports say that the summit could approve the creation of a European Commission-style Caricom Commission with executive powers as part of the overhaul of the Community Secretariat.
For more on the meeting, see http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/