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The one day event was chaired by Belize's Foreign Minister Wilfred Elrington who told us that much of the deliberations have been bogged down trying to get past a technical hurdle: The Dominican Republic, which is a member of Cariforum, but not Caricom wants to make sure its interests are safeguarded.

Hon. Wilfred Elrington, Minister of Foreign Affairs
"The impression we are getting is that the Dominican Republic has some reservation in relation to the rule of SG in Caricom and the reporting processor, they seem to believe (that's the impression I am getting) that there is going to be more of a bias in favor of Caricom countries than in fact Dominican Republic. You see we have to have consensus and they are the outsider as it were. The rest of the Caricom countries have no difficulty. Their attempt is to try to match the opinion of the Dominican Republic with that of the Caricom countries; we want to find an accommodation because we all have to agree if we are to move forward."

Elrington told us that he had no knowledge of meetings between the Jamaican and Barbadian Foreign Ministers to discuss the free movement of Jamaicans into Barbados.