CARIBBEAN: CARICOM FAMILY WOOED BY SOUTH AMERICAN COUSINS.

By Bert Wilkinson

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Jul. 6, 2009 (IPS/GIN) - Venezuela's growing political and economic clout is taking a toll on efforts to strengthen the Caribbean's trade bloc, as island nations increasingly look towards the dynamic alliance lead by President Hugo Chavez.

Some Caribbean leaders, meeting for their four-day annual summit in Guyana, complained that the growing number of Caribbean trade bloc nations joining the Venezuelan and Cuban-led Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) is causing discomfort at the highest levels and could detract from efforts to strengthen Caricom itself.

In recent months, Dominica, St. Vincent and Antigua have signed up with the South American-dominated grouping that Venezuelan President Chavez and the Castro brothers in Cuba argue is the best alternative to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas once pushed by their arch political rival, the United States.

Caribbean members of the nine-nation ALBA grouping are also members of the PetroCaribe family through which more than a dozen Caribbean countries get Venezuelan oil on credit with delayed payments, or which are allowed to compensate their South American creditor in national commodities such as bananas and sugar among other items.

Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding, whose governing Jamaican Labour Party has not traditionally been the strongest proponent of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), said that while sovereign nations reserve the right to sign on to other bodies, he hopes it does not take away from efforts to build a stronger trade bloc.

"When you start to create other alliances you assume other responsibilities and obligations which may very well cut across the obligations you have at home," he argued, conceding that most presidents and prime ministers are "frustrated and impatient" at the pace of regional integration in the Caricom bloc.