(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Incoming Chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and Prime Minister of Barbados, the Rt. Hon. Owen Arthur, will address the formal opening ceremony of the 28th Meeting of the Conference of the Heads of Government of CARICOM on 1 July 2007 in the Courtyard of the Barbados Parliament.
Other speakers at the opening are outgoing Chairman, and Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr. the Hon. Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of the Bahamas, the Rt. Hon. Hubert Ingraham, Acting Prime Minister of St. Lucia, the Hon. Stephenson King, and CARICOM Secretary General HE Edwin Carrington.
Secretary General Carrington told representatives of the media at a videoconference on 28 June 2007 that at the opening, medals will be handed out for the Third Annual 10K race that will be staged in Barbados earlier in the day under the theme ‘The Health of the Region is the Wealth of the Region’. The race will start and end at the Bay Street Esplanade, opposite the Office of the Prime Minister.
A reception follows the formal opening.
The business sessions of the Conference will be held at the Barbados Hilton Needham’s Point, St Michael. Heads of Government will go into retreat on Tuesday.
In addition to discussions under the main theme of functional cooperation, Heads of Government will consider a preliminary report on the future of West Indies Cricket and a review of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 held earlier this year in nine member states of the Community. The Secretary General said he hoped that legacies of CWC, including the Advanced Passenger Information System (APIS) and intelligence sharing, would be retained.
Also on the agenda of the 28th Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government is the “very vexed and very difficult” question of air transport, the Secretary General said. Air transport within the Region, he said, affected the commingling of the Caribbean peoples.
The Conference concludes on 4 July 2007.
