Nine Heads of State, including two from Caricom, are expected to attend the two-day Rio Summit, which officially opens tomorrow even-ing at the National Cultural Centre.
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rudy Insanally told the media yesterday that President Bharrat Jagdeo and Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Patrick Manning will represent Caricom at the summit, which would have its substantive meeting on Saturday at the Guyana Inter-national Convention Centre, Liliendaal.
Insanally said members of the Caricom Prime Minister-ial Bureau were invited, but only Manning had confirmed his participation.
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, President Michelle Bachelet of Chile, President Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa of Mexico, President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, Presi-dent Martin Torrijos Espino of Panama, and President Leonel Antonio Fernandez Reyna of the Dominican Republic have all confirmed their participation.
The other members of the Rio Group are Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicara-gua, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.
The heads are all expected to arrive in the country tomorrow afternoon.
Also expected are Secretary General of the Organisation of American States Jose Miguel Insulza and the President of the Caribbean Development Bank, Dr Compton Bourne.
Insanally noted, too, that journalists from 30 countries have been accredited for the occasion and one country’s delegation alone has some 60 media workers accredited. He did not name the country.
Apart from the substantive agenda, which would feature social issues based on a study conducted by Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Insanally said Jagdeo is likely to have bilateral meetings with some of the heads during the summit. It is expected that other heads would also hold bilaterals.
Yesterday also, the National Coordinators of the Rio Group met at Le Meridien Pegasus Hotel to focus on the Declaration of Turkeyen, which is expected to be a major outcome of the Summit and which reflects the views of a number of the delegations.
That meeting, held in advance of today’s gathering of Foreign Ministers of the Rio Group at the Guyana International Convention Centre, was to fine-tune the Declaration of Turkeyen as well as finalise the agenda for Saturday’s summit.
Chairperson and Director General in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ambassador Elisabeth Harper said that yesterday’s coordinators’ meeting intended to tackle a number of the challenges that the coordinators faced during the past year.
This would include, she said, a proposal in the form of a report on ‘The Treatment of asymmetries in the context of Regional Cooperation’ and a ‘Plan of Action’ regarding the democratization of international relations.
Harper told representatives of the various countries that for Guyana, the significance of the relationship forged among Rio Group members was more than symbolic since it represents an important opportunity for cooperation and rapprochement between two sub-regions whose destinies are interlinked politically, economically and socially, despite differences that might have marked the historical evolution of societies in the region.
Referring to the journey the region has travelled since the group was formed in 1986 and the first summit was held in Acapulco the following year, Harper said the realities that faced the group 20 years ago are now different than those that led to its creation.
She said the state of civil war that prevailed in a number of countries at the time was no longer there. The region has since trodden a path of democratic reform marked by the guarantee of free and fair elections, establishment of the rule of law, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and countries remain committed to the social and economic advancement of the peoples, she added.
Noting that many challenges remain to be addressed at the regional and global levels, Harper said poverty and inequality was still quite formidable and there was a need to entrench a democratic culture and consolidate the rule of law. The exclusion of developing countries owing to the system of economic governance, and the cohesion and effectiveness of the Rio Group is also cause for reflection, she said. (Miranda La Rose)
