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.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS