Caribbean Dialogue July/August 1994

The Importance of Negotiation Preparedness: Reflections on the Caribbean Experience
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Alister McIntyre

Over the past three decades, the CARICOM countries have both individually, and as a group, accumulated considerable experience in regional and international negotiations. Within the region, the development of CARICOM and related institutions and arrangements have taken up a considerable amount of time of governments. Associated with that have been trade and economic agreements with major trading partners – European Union (EU), Canada and, more recently, the United States. Governments have also been involved in almost unending negotiations with the international financial institutions over their stabilisation and adjustment programmes. At different periods substantial attention has also been paid to global negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations and its specialized agencies, such as GATT. Furthermore, some governments have been intensely involved in negotiations with international companies in the fields such as natural resources telecommunications. It is not possible in a single presentation to distill and synthesise this wide variety of experiences into a set of reflections. What I shall do is to concentrate on the governmental trade and economic negotiations with overseas countries and groups of countries, partly because we are on the threshold of new negotiations for entry in to NAFTA, and the lessons of the past may be of some help in structuring the future.

THE PREPARATORY PROCESS Starting first with the issue of how CARICOM has prepared for international negotiations, the typical pattern has been for the Heads of Government to agree on a broad strategy, leaving it to a Committee of Ministers, drawn from the CARICOM Council, to work out the detailed approach to the