WESTERN BUREAU:
ORGANISED CRIME and money laundering, trade, investment, the fight against HIV/AIDS and reform of the United Nations will be main agenda items for discussion at the Canada/Caricom Summit which begins tomorrow.
Money laundering will be discussed in the context of the reform of tax haven laws as suggested by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The OECD has been described as a think tank, monitoring agency, rich man's club, and an unacademic university at various times. It is in fact a group of 29 member countries which produce two thirds of the world's goods and services, that "provide governments a setting in which to discuss, develop and perfect economic and social policies".
An OECD working group has criticised some aspects of the Caribbean tax havens, suggesting they had become outposts for laundering drug money and other proceeds from crime.
Also high on the agenda is the Third Summit of the Americas which Canada will host in April in Quebec. Cuba, which continues to be the target of United States economic sanctions, is expected to be invited to this meeting.
Officials in the Office of the Prime Minister (Jamaica) said the agenda which was set for the aborted September meeting remains basically the same.
The summit was cancelled in September following the death of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau while incumbent PM Jean Chretien was enroute to Montego Bay.
Two important meetings will immediately precede the Montego Bay Summit, according to a release from the Jamaica Information Service: a caucus of heads of CARICOM and Haiti and a meeting between Prime Ministers Patterson and Chretien.
