BY JULIE CARRINGTON | JUN 12, 2022
Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has deemed her recent trip to the just concluded ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, California, as a success.
Ms. Mottley said the meeting afforded the region an opportunity to lift the standard of the relationship forged in recent times by the Caribbean Basin Initiative under late President Ronald Reagan.
Speaking during a press conference at Grantley Adams International Airport earlier today, she noted that “for 40 years we have not seen that kind of engagement that we have seen with the United States of America in a meaningful way”.
Ms. Mottley thanked the Biden-Harris administration for meeting with Caribbean leaders, and from those talks, agreement was reached on the launch of the Caribbean Partnership for Climate Action to address climate action (PAC 2030), given the vulnerabilities of small island developing states to natural disasters.
“In my view, President Biden was the glue that kept this thing together. He appreciated the concerns, and in spite of the fact that the United States is engaged clearly in a number of other global issues…. And I want to make the point that we have three global crises happening all at once. Any one is sufficient to take us out…. So that when we talk in Barbados it is not simply about Barbados alone; this is a global problem,” she maintained.
The Prime Minister added that based on discussions, sub-committees on food and energy security and finance were set up.
Ms. Mottley insisted that “real progress” and not platitudes were needed and reported that work plans to guide the process were being finalised.
She proferred: “And CARICOM has a duty to ensure that we know with clarity who and what will be done in the short term. And if you look at the same White House statement, … the White House statement speaks to it … and says specifically that the CARICOM and the Dominican Republic, they’ve agreed to form three high level committees tasked with developing immediate and concrete, joint and near term solutions. That is CARICOM language…that is our language.”
