Caribbean leaders said they have asked the US to expand a US$1.4 billion program to help Mexico and Central America fight drug trafficking and organized crime to include aid for their island country.
The so-called Merida Initiative should include funding for Caribbean countries where drug-related gun deaths are rising, Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo said after Caribbean leaders met US congressmen on Saturday.
Jagdeo said Caribbean presidents and prime ministers told US lawmakers that a crackdown in Mexico could push drug traffickers into the Caribbean, which lies directly between the South American source of many illegal drugs and the US, the world’s top consumer.
RESOURCES
“We have to spend resources that we do not have on interdiction,” Barbados Prime Minister David Thompson added, stressing how hard it is to fight trafficking with many island’s poorly funded police and limited armies.
US President Barack Obama on Friday told a hemispheric summit in Trinidad that the US would provide at least US$30 million to help strengthen security in the Caribbean.
Caribbean leaders directly addressed economic aid, gun and drug smuggling and other issues in a one-hour meeting with Obama late on Friday, describing a new tone in US policy and expressing hope for closer ties.
LISTENING
“The US is not lecturing us anymore, but rather listening,” Jagdeo said. “They need to listen and that is what we got.”
Obama also promised to ask the World Bank and the IMF to consider boosting credit to the region, Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding said.
Caribbean leaders said they hoped talks would continue in a second round of meetings in Washington later this year.
US officials did not immediately confirm those plans.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
RSS