Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Pro­duc­er

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

Ja­maica’s for­mer longest-serv­ing Prime Min­is­ter PJ Pat­ter­son has ex­pressed deep con­cern over the US mil­i­tary build-up in the Caribbean.

He spoke to Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day, hours af­ter for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley shared the de­c­la­ra­tion, which was signed by 10 for­mer re­gion­al heads of state. The de­c­la­ra­tion ex­pressed their ap­pre­hen­sion about Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­ci­sion to en­dorse and fa­cil­i­tate US nar­co-strikes in the Caribbean.

Pat­ter­son said, “We hope that there be no fur­ther es­ca­la­tion, and cer­tain­ly, we are very fear­ful of the con­se­quences if things reached the point where there is ac­tu­al mil­i­tary con­flict whether on land, on sea and very im­por­tant­ly, not oft men­tioned, our air­space.”

He said these are crit­i­cal is­sues for the re­gion, which ex­pe­ri­ences high ma­rine traf­fic for in­ter­na­tion­al trade and yacht­ing, but, most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, tourism. An in­crease in mil­i­tary traf­fic and ac­tiv­i­ty could dis­cour­age the main­te­nance or growth of these forms of ma­rine traf­fic, es­pe­cial­ly as the win­ter peak sea­son be­gins in De­cem­ber.

“To a very large ex­tent, many of our ter­ri­to­ries are en­gaged in the busi­ness of tourism and cer­tain­ly that would be a dag­ger to the tourist in­dus­try,” he added.

The re­gion­al heads were as­sem­bled by Pat­ter­son who thought the sit­u­a­tion war­rant­ed a col­lec­tive re­sponse.

“Over the re­cent pe­ri­od sev­er­al peo­ple and sev­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions have been in con­tact with us sep­a­rate­ly and col­lec­tive­ly to seek state­ments on the sit­u­a­tion which is un­fold­ing in the Caribbean,” Pat­ter­son said. He said the on­ly rea­son Dr Row­ley was not in­clud­ed as a sig­na­to­ry was that they had dif­fi­cul­ty con­tact­ing him while draft­ing the state­ment.

He said there has been some thought to for­mal­ly es­tab­lish­ing a group of for­mer Cari­com heads, but that con­sid­er­able plan­ning was need­ed to make it hap­pen. “It would re­quire cer­tain re­sources to be made avail­able to us which as re­tired state­men we no longer read­i­ly have,” Pat­ter­son said. He be­lieves there would be great mer­it if such a group could be for­malised.