Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders have agreed to establish a Council of Ambassadors, which they hope will lead effective implementation of decisions taken.It's one of the measures to deepen the regional integration movement.
CARICOM Chairman and Jamaica’s Prime Minister Bruce Golding told reporters he hopes regional leaders would approve the new mechanism when they meet later this year.
“The concept would be that the ambassadors would be based in their respective countries, they would head what we have termed the regional integration unit which is to be established in a few months,” Golding said following a one-day meeting of the CARICOM sub-committee on Governance.
“The concept is that we won’t have to create new institutions where these exist already, what we would need to do is ensure that they are calibrated with the new mandate of the ambassadors,” Golding said.
He added that the jobs of the ambassadors would be “to follow up, make sure that domestic action is taken to give effect to the decisions of the heads”.
Golding said that he hopes that by July 2011, the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas would be further adjusted to recognise the Council of Ambassadors as an independent organ.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar of Trinidad and Tobago did not attend the meeting, which was held in Grenada. Foreign Minister Dr Surujrattan Rambachan represented the country.
The meeting also agreed to the establishment of a nine-member committee to begin the pre-selection process for candidates to succeed CARICOM Secretary General Edwin Carrington, who is quitting at the end of the year after 18 years in the job.
Barbadian Foreign Minister Maxine Mc Lean would chair that committee. Golding said he expects a preliminary report and a list of candidates by September when the Heads gather in New York.
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