Caribbean News

KINGSTON, Jamaica: Minister of National Security, Senator Dwight Nelson, has described the findings contained in the recent International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) as an inaccurate depiction of Jamaica's efforts to combat drugs and organized crime.

The report, compiled by the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs of the United States' Department of State, asserted that the government's anti-corruption and anti-crime legislative agenda, announced in 2007, has been stalled in Parliament.

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad & Tobago: A month after taking over the reins of the opposition United National Congress (UNC) from Basdeo Panday, Kamla Persad-Bissessar has assumed the Opposition Leader position in the House of Representatives.

"Our party now speaks with one voice," said Persad-Bissessar after receiving her instruments of appointment last week. "We will chart a new way forward to deliver on the hopes and expectations of our citizenry, desperate for a way out of the crisis which the (Patrick Manning) administration has led this nation into."

Persad-Bissessar added that she would bring citizens relief by leading her party back into government.

KINGSTON, Jamaica: Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett says a strategy is being developed for the economic recovery of earthquake-hit Haiti, which will use elements of Jamaica's Tourism Master Plan.

This strategy, called the Montego Bay Initiative, will position tourism as a main pillar for the economic development of Haiti.

"The model which is being used is really a model that draws heavily on the Jamaica Tourism Master Plan and therefore it makes it very easy for us to respond and to work well with it," Bartlett said.

Bartlett said Haiti has identified tourism as one of three components on which its economic restoration program would be predicated. The others are agriculture and light manufacturing industries.

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts & Nevis: St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas has called on a non-governmental organization (NGO) group which monitored last month's elections to retract part of its report that accuses him of interfering in the electoral process.

Dr. Douglas described the claim made in the report compiled by the NGO Coalition, comprising the St. Kitts-Nevis Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the Evangelical Association and the Christian Council, as "malicious in intent and deliberately false".

The group stated in its report that "it was generally agreed that the elections were conducted in a free and fair manner in most instances", but claimed that Douglas was seen interfering in the voting process in one constituency.