A LIST of nine critical objectives are given as absolute priorities for the integration of external relations by the members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States and Trinidad and Tobago, in the proposals for closer union now being discussed across the region.

These are listed as follows: Expanding the competitive export of goods and services; Attracting foreign investment; Wooing technology transfer and managerial expertise; Developing niche markets for a diversified tourism product; Establishing global marketing arrangements with the major exporters of energy products; Maintaining cultural and economic relations with the union’s Diaspora in metropolitan countries; Servicing the consular needs of nationals abroad; Providing consular services for the ships of flag States at major foreign ports; Soliciting technical assistance for purposes of human, scientific and infrastructural development-bilaterally from key states and multilaterally from major international organisations and agencies.

In making these proposals as part of its calls for re-organising the external affairs priorities of the states involved, the Task Force on OECS-Trinidad and Tobago union said such a programme must take into account ’the openness of the union and the limitations of its size and resources in the face of the new multilateralism that has emerged as a prominent feature of the international environment’.

While the issue aims more directly at the states working towards this movement within the wider Caricom, it has implications for the broader integration movement meeting in Georgetown, Guyana, from Thursday, for the 30th regular meeting of Caricom Heads of Government.

As their planned approach to the international community on the impact of the global financial and economic ’crisis’ suggests, Caricom member states are renewing their general position regarding external negotiations. The Georgetown summit will hear a progress report from a team headed by Barbadian monetary economist Delisle Worrell as to how the community should address the international financial situation.

This very point is emphasised in the report of the OECS-Trinidad and Tobago Union Task Force, headed by St Lucian political scientist Prof Vaughn Lewis, former director general of the OECS. His report was handed in on May 24 at the special summit called in Port of Spain, at which the Worrell team was established.

Taking as a given what it saw as the set of circumstances leading to ’a new multillateralism’ internationally, the Lewis Task Force saw immediate responses for the countries in Caricom.

Its report said the countries in the Eastern Caribbean, including Barbados and together with Trinidad and Tobago, ’given their existing trade, investment and security realities and priorities, will find themselves needing to organise a more coherent relationship among themselves.

’That perceived need is likely to be to provide themselves with the weight required, greater than each can muster, for effective participation in the emerging sets of multilateral relationships,’ the report said.

And among the set of implications exposed by these ’realities’, the Lewis Task Force report highlighted the need for coherent provision of facilities for training, related to the various areas of multilateral diplomacy. Such training, the report said, would be distinct from the formal academic type and would make for the provision of an adequate, diversified cadre of personnel equipped to function in the new environment.

In her own study of the performance of Caricom states in the conduct of foreign affairs and international relations over the last four decades, Trinidad and Tobago-born professor Jacqueline-Ann Braveboy-Wagner has called for a new kind of Caribbean diplomat.

Prof Braveboy-Wagner is chairing a team which has been conducting a foreign policy review for the Government of Trinidad and Tobago since 2006. The Government has also announced its intention to establish a diplomatic academy as a direct outgrowth of this review exercise.

Saying in the introduction of her work, published in January 2008, that along with the changes in the context, content and actors in foreign policy, the conduct of foreign policy and the role of the diplomat have also changed, she has called for a new kind of Caribbean diplomat to meet the times. It is an idea which is not entirely new, however.

’To meet today’s needs,’ she says, ’the traditional generalist diplomat needs to be more knowledgeable about technical areas, including the complexities and legalities of trade and tax negotiations, and aspects of science and technology, informatics, energy and other areas.

’Even with new focus on security in the form of global counter-terrorism, greater specialisation in non-traditional areas is needed-for example the need to learn non-Romance languages, to be culturally savvy in a more strongly integrated and contentious global village, to understand the details of the conduct of intelligence, and to know the technical and legal implications of security policies being put in place by one’s own country and by other countries.

’Today’s diplomat must make proper use of information technology,’ she argues further, ’both to gather and send information. Much diplomatic interaction can now take place remotely, either as a substitute for travel or as a way to be more prepared in face-to-face negotiations.

’More importantly, with the heightened need for more specialised diplomats, other bureaucracies are increasingly playing prominent roles in foreign affairs, usurping the centrality of the traditional diplomatic services. In small developing states such as those in the Caribbean, all of the above applies with particular relevance,’ she says.