Your Excellency
Dame Louise Lake Tack, Governor-General;

Colleague Members of the Cabinet;

Distinguished Foreign Ministers of CARICOM;

Secretary General - Edwin Carrington;

Honourable President and Members of the Senate;

Honourable Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives;

Members of the Diplomatic Corps;

Distinguished Members of the Judiciary;

Distinguished Members of the Clergy;

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen:

I have the special pleasure and honour to welcome you to this ceremony that marks the launch of the COFCOR meeting that Antigua and Barbuda is especially privileged to host.

I welcome especially those delegations visiting us, and even more especially those who are visiting for the first time. We welcome you to our island paradise where the beach is just the beginning of your experience.

This evening we gather to officially open the eleventh meeting of the CARICOM Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR). This CARICOM organ is responsible for one of the most important functions of CARICOM - the coordination of foreign policy.

In a world increasingly indifferent to the concerns of small states, COFCOR has the task of securing CARICOM's collective interest in a turbulent international environment. In my own view, it is a task that COFCOR does well.

As we all know, CARICOM is an association of sovereign states. And while there have been proposals to strengthen the governance of CARICOM through direct legislation, we have not yet reached the day when all CARICOM member states act as one.

While CARICOM may not yet have reached the stage of acting as one, there is no doubt that the external world treats us as one. As a result, no matter the region or country of the world, they seek to engage all the member states of CARICOM in a coordinated way.

This imposes a special responsibility on CARICOM members to also deal with the external world in a coordinated fashion. And the mechanism that allows this to happen is COFCOR.

The world is a complex place, and we live in an age that demands solutions to problems that only yield to international cooperation. No country, big or small, has the capacity to solve problems such as drug-trafficking or climate change on its own.

As small states, we have minimal influence on the international problems that dominate our headlines, whether rising oil prices, rising food prices, increasing poverty, environmental degradation or war and conflict.

Yet when we act together in CARICOM, our influence is more than minimal and we allow our voices to be heard on the international stage.

In recent years, CARICOM has set out to engage countries in different regions of the world, and whether India or Mexico, Spain or Korea, the Joint Commission has proved to be a very useful instrument in managing relations with these and other countries.

At the risk of sounding immodest, I declare that CARICOM has engaged all the major world powers through various mechanisms and, to use the phrase of a former British Foreign Secretary, we 'punch above our weight'.

Less than a year ago we organized the historic Conference on the Caribbean in Washington DC, where CARICOM leaders had the opportunity to interact with US executive and legislative leaders, including President Bush, and to energize the Caribbean diaspora.

In two months we will engage the United Kingdom again through the UK/Caribbean Forum, a ministerial mechanism that brings together key priority issues that address the development challenges that affect all states.

In the Asian region, CARICOM has established the Japan/CARICOM Consultation Meeting, and although meetings of this important body have receded in recent times, this mechanism remains a vital instrument for developing CARICOM-Japan relations.

Next month will see the second CARICOM-Spain Summit, including CARICOM participation in the Expo at Za-ra-go-sa. I predict that this Summit will give political impetus to a range of initiatives that form an essential part of our relations with Spain.

I recite these various initiatives to highlight the point that CARICOM is fully engaged with the world, and poised to become more so.

This should not be a surprise, as our Caribbean populations demand an active and sophisticated foreign policy of their governments in order to secure the interests of our region.

We tend to think of CARICOM as one unit, and while this is true, it also masks the very great differences that exist among the membership. The differences between a Trinidad and Tobago, an oil and gas power in the southern Caribbean, and a Dominica for instance, are vast indeed.

In population size, in the structure of their economies, in almost every measurable indicator, they are worlds apart.

CARICOM even has the unique distinction of also having dependent territories among its membership, one of which is a founding member.

In addition, there is a sub-group of countries within CARICOM whose integration arrangements far exceed CARICOM's own and whose interests therefore may not necessarily comport in all aspects with other members.

I say all this to emphasize that forging a coordinated CARICOM foreign policy is not as easy as it sounds, and I anticipate that our debates over the next two days will be very involved as we seek to reach common positions.

While there have been CARICOM foreign policy successes, it is no surprise that the foreign policy failures seem to get more media attention.

It is no secret, for instance, that CARICOM has been unable to reach foreign policy consensus on the question of China.

And while there are some CARICOM member states that maintain relations with Taiwan, two-thirds of the CARICOM membership have relations with China and have established the Caribbean-China Consultation Meeting as a permanent forum for advancing relations. A meeting of this body is due to be held later this year in the Caribbean.

In our own hemisphere and region, CARICOM is meaningfully engaged with both Cuba and Venezuela, two of the major players. In December of this year, the third CARICOM/Cuba Summit will take place in Havana and will provide an opportunity for CARICOM to engage with the new leadership of Cuba.

The initiatives pursued by Venezuela in recent years, both PetroCaribe and the ALBA, have generated considerable debate in the region among both policy-makers and commentators, and rightly so. These initiatives have the potential to impact the region in a significant way, and CARICOM needs a coherent policy in relation to them both.

It is therefore appropriate that as Foreign Ministers we give full consideration to these matters, and arrangements have been made for us to debate these issues during our retreat on the first day of our meeting.

As I assume the chairmanship of COFCOR, I announce my intention to rally my colleagues in a more active engagement of COFCOR with world events and to see COFCOR adopt a more proactive stance on matters that affect the interests of CARICOM.

It is well-known that there is a Bureau of the Conference of CARICOM Heads of Government. What is less well-known is that the Heads of Government borrowed the idea of the Bureau from their Foreign Ministers.

I believe that the Bureau of CARICOM Foreign Ministers, comprising the current chairman, the past chairman, the incoming chairman and the Secretary-General, is important as an executive committee that allows CARICOM to be more decisive and nimble in its pursuit of CARICOM's collective interest on the world stage.

During my tenure I shall call on the Bureau to be more active in implementing the central mandate of the COFCOR, the coordination of CARICOM foreign policy.

I am well aware that many of the issues debated by COFCOR also fall to the consideration of the Conference of Heads of Government. This gives the COFCOR a unique opportunity to advise the CARICOM Heads of Government and to recommend sound policies for adoption.

As a member who sits on both bodies, I shall do my best to increase the coordination between these two vital CARICOM organs. Such coordination can only redound to the benefit of CARICOM as a whole.

As Chairman of COFCOR and Incoming Chairman of CARICOM, I pledge my commitment to ensuring that our deliberations are fruitful.

The peoples of the region whom we serve expect much of us. We must not fail them.

May God bless all our nations and all our peoples.

Thank You.