But a number of CARICOM leaders will be notably absent from the working breakfast with the President in New York tomorrow.
Also scheduled to attend that meeting are the heads of state of Guyana, Grenada and St. Lucia.
Charge d’Affaires of the U.S. Embassy Robert Witajewski said today that the meeting is a “good sign” of the cordial relationship that exists between The Bahamas and the United States.
“The Bahamas is special and we have a unique relationship with The Bahamas,” said Mr. Witajewski, who was a guest on the Love 97 radio programme ‘Issues of The Day’.
“I’d say the fact that the President of the United States and the Secretary of State are going to be having breakfast with Prime Minister Christie and Foreign Minister Mitchell on Wednesday is about as good a sign as you can have of the fundamentally excellent relationship that we have between our two countries,” he said.
Mr. Witajewski said the invitation reflects the “great cooperative work” between The Bahamas and the United States on alien interdiction, and interdiction of illegal drugs transiting the two countries.
“The Bahamas has been very helpful working with us on Haiti which is an important issue that I think impacts dramatically on both of our countries and The Bahamas took a very principled stand when [it] signed the OAS declaration on Cuba denouncing the violations of human rights in Cuba, which is one of the worst waves of repression we’ve seen over the last several decades.” he said.
“Things are going, very, very well and we expect this meeting to be extremely positive and beneficial and things are only going to get better,” Mr. Witajewski said.
But others are not so optimistic.
Commenting on the non-participation of at least six Caribbean leaders in the meeting, Professor Vaughn Lewis of the Institute of International Research at the University of the West Indies told the Caribbean Media Corporation yesterday that it has been obvious for some time that CARICOM countries have been holding divergent views on various U.S. policies.
The meeting comes only days after Mr. Bush placed The Bahamas and 22 other countries on an unfavourable list of major drug transshipment and drug producing countries.
The Bahamas has been bearing this brand for several years now.
ﾠBut in placing the country on that list, the White House was quick to point out that a country’s presence on the list is not necessarily an adverse reflection of its government’s counternarcotics efforts or level of cooperation with the United States.
Mr. Christie was set to head to New York the same day that President Bush delivered a much-anticipated address to the United Nations’ General Assembly.
Mr. Bush said that, there is “no neutral ground” in the war on terrorism.
“All governments that support terror are complicit in a war against civilization. No government should ignore the threat of terror, because to look the other way gives terrorists the chance to regroup, and recruit, and prepare. And all nations that fight terror, as if the lives of their own people depend on it, will earn the favorable judgment of history,” Bush said.
He added, “Our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq were supported by many governments, and America is grateful to each one. I also recognize that some of the sovereign nations of this assembly disagreed with our actions. Yet there was, and there remains, unity among us on the fundamental principles and objectives of the United Nations.”
The Bahama Journal
