Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper yesterday praised the role of Caricom countries in defusing the fireworks at the Fifth Summit of the Americas.

He was speaking at a news conference immediately after the closing ceremony, which was held at the Diplomatic Centre in St Ann’s.

Harper said the goodwill amongst countries of the Americas which was created at this Summit was a promising development in difficult economic times.

He said one reason for this spirit was the speech delivered by United States President Barack Obama at the opening ceremony on Friday, in which he expressed the position of the US but reflected an openness to the opinions of others.

Secondly, Harper said, there was ’tremendous reciprocation’ of that spirit by others, especially by members of ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) as the conference progressed.

Harper said the third reason for the cooperation which developed was the involvement of Caricom countries ’as participants and particularly as host’.

’The Caribbean countries were a tremendous voice of reason and openness at those times when dialogue did get a little heated. Without steering us away from those disagreements, our Caribbean hosts did an excellent job in taking the temperature out of those things and having very reasonable exchange on the issues that did divide us,’ Harper stated, adding that great credit had to go to Trinidad and Tobago and Prime Minister Patrick Manning as host.

-Ria Taitt