Trinidad and Tobago, 2004

Mr. President, on behalf of the Government and the

people of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, I

extend congratulations to Mr. Ping on his election to

the presidency of the General Assembly at its fifty-

ninth session. We are confident that his experience and

diplomatic skills will enable him to discharge fully the

weighty responsibilities of his office.

Permit me to convey to his predecessor, The

Honourable Julian Hunte, Minister of Foreign Affairs

of Saint Lucia, our deep appreciation of his efforts

towards revitalization of the General Assembly.

I wish also to convey to our Secretary-General,

Mr. Kofi Annan, the full support of the Government

and the people of Trinidad and Tobago as he continues

the global initiatives of the United Nations towards

making the world better and safer for all humanity.

Today Trinidad and Tobago is celebrating its

twenty-eighth anniversary as a republic. Over our 42

years as an independent country, we have made

significant strides in the development of our nation. We

have maintained a strong tradition of democratic

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governance through an increasingly inclusive and

multiparty political system; by respecting fully the

constitutionally entrenched and internationally

recognized fundamental human rights and freedoms of

the individual; and by ensuring strict adherence to the

rule of law.

We have sought increasingly to diversify our

economic base. Through consistent and sound macro-

economic policies, together with prudent management

and use of our resources, we have sustained more than

a decade of positive economic growth, which last year

was of the order of 13.2 per cent.

Our country has made significant strides in

advancing the capabilities of our people through

universal access to primary and secondary education.

We have gone further through our State-sponsored

preschool programme, which targets universal early

childhood education by 2010, and by fully opening the

gateway to tertiary education through support for every

student, enhanced funding for deserving ones, and our

recently established University of Trinidad and

Tobago.

Our archipelagic Republic, populated by 1.3

million people of African, Indian, European, Chinese,

Middle Eastern and mixed ancestries, constitutes a

veritable microcosm of the people of the world.

However, we have been able to foster racial harmony

and religious tolerance through the collective embrace

of the diversity of our people.

That approach, together with adherence to

integrity and transparency in public affairs and equality

of opportunity for all, has been essential to the

continued peace, stability and progress we enjoy as we

propose to make Trinidad and Tobago a beacon of

integrity in the world.

Trinidad and Tobago has demonstrated

remarkable strength and resilience in the face of a

global environment characterized by rapid economic,

social and other changes; this has mobilized us to

embark on the realization of a bold new vision in the

pursuit of our developmental agenda. In that respect,

our Government and people are currently engaged in a

highly participatory consultative process aimed at

formulating a National Strategic Development Plan to

guide Trinidad and Tobago towards becoming a

developed nation by the year 2020 or earlier.

It is called Vision 2020, and its agenda includes

human capital development; the evolution of a

technologically driven, knowledge-based society; the

development of a highly productive and globally

competitive economy; and, by the year 2020, the

provision for all our citizens of a standard of living

comparable to that enjoyed in developed countries.

Our achievements stand in indisputable testimony

to what a small, independent nation such as ours can do

in that regard. There is an instructive link between two

of the features that today define and distinguish our

country among others in the region. One is our oil and

natural gas resources — the foundation and mainstay

of our economy; the other, the steelpan, our creation

derived from heating and tuning the top of discarded

oil drums.

The steelpan is one of the most important musical

instruments invented during the last century. We are

proud to have created it, and equally so of its growing

international recognition and popularity, which is an

apt reflection of the phenomenal ingenuity of the

peoples of developing countries.

The same holds true in respect of achievements in

our energy sector. At just over 130,000 barrels of oil

per day, Trinidad and Tobago’s production is not

significant by international standards. Our natural gas

production, however, stands at 2.9 billion cubic feet

per day, and that has propelled my country to become

today the world’s largest exporter of methanol and also

of ammonia. We are currently supplying 80 per cent of

United States liquid natural gas imports out of our

three trains, and we propose to leverage that fact

towards Caribbean regional development. We are also a

critical supplier of energy to our Caribbean neighbours.

To further facilitate this, we are exploring the

feasibility of several energy-related projects, including

the establishment of a natural gas pipeline through the

eastern Caribbean. We have also entered into a joint

venture with neighbouring Venezuela to liquefy that

country’s natural gas in Trinidad and Tobago.

Meanwhile, our iron and steel production

facilities are being expanded. Several new production

facilities are in train, among them an ethylene

production complex, an aluminium smelter project, and

others for expanded ammonia and methanol production

as well as other downstream petrochemical products.

The combination of an attractive and enabling

investment climate, available and affordable energy, a

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strategic location vis-à-vis the North, Central and

South American and European markets, a population

literacy level of over 90 per cent, and a sound work

ethic, as well as a good communications infrastructure,

continue to make Trinidad and Tobago one of the

largest per-capita recipients of foreign direct

investment in the hemisphere. Indeed, last year we

were the second-largest recipient after Canada.

Like other countries we, too, have our fair share

of challenges. For example, our strategic location —

less than nine miles off the South American coast and

to the south of the Caribbean island chain, with

excellent air and sea transport links to major North

Atlantic cities — renders Trinidad and Tobago highly

vulnerable to trade in illegal drugs and firearms.

Combating narco-trafficking, drug-related crimes and

the spread of HIV/AIDS is among our greatest

challenges, but the Government of Trinidad and

Tobago remains resolute in its determination to

eradicate those scourges. We continue to implement the

measures necessary to fight them and are confident that

we shall win the battle.

Our development agenda is not centred solely on

the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. It is part and

parcel of a pan-Caribbean agenda to which we are

irrevocably and solidly committed, and which takes

into consideration the fullest development of the

countries of our region. Many historical and other ties

bind our Caribbean nations and we understand that the

fundamental basis for our development lies in being

able to work more closely together to exert a greater

influence on our own as well as global development,

which for centuries have been dictated by others.

Today, our level of functional cooperation in the

region has increased over a range of areas and Trinidad

and Tobago continues to play a central role at all

levels. We therefore look forward to the

operationalization of our newest Caribbean institution,

the Caribbean Court of Justice, which will serve as the

arbitral body for the soon-to-be-established CARICOM

Single Market and Economy, as well as the region’s

final appellate Court, and will be headquartered in Port

of Spain.

The development of Trinidad and Tobago and

CARICOM are intertwined. CARICOM is our second

largest export market after the United States of

America, absorbing close to 20 per cent of our exports.

Our share of regional trade grew to 80 per cent in

2001. Since 1996, we have contributed approximately

US$ 1.4 billion in assistance to Caribbean States

through a variety of mechanisms including capital

market activities, foreign direct investment, debt relief,

and direct assistance. Last year we provided US$ 505

million in loans to companies and Governments in the

region, some of whom have difficulty in borrowing on

the international market. In addition, we have recently

established a new grant facility, to be based on sales of

petroleum products to the region, which will be

dedicated to poverty eradication within CARICOM.

My country sees the development of the

Caribbean, our second largest market, as integral to the

development of Trinidad and Tobago. Even so, our

national and regional development efforts require an

international economic environment of greater

sensitivity, one facilitating a more beneficial

integration of developing countries into the world

economy. In that regard, as sanguine as we are about

the future of Trinidad and Tobago, I must on this

occasion take a stand in the interest of the beleaguered

nations of the Caribbean. How often have small

independent States preached from this very

mountaintop of the need for multilateral trading

arrangements that take into account the inherent

vulnerabilities of small island developing States, and

consequently the need to be accorded special and

differential treatment? There is a notable reluctance of

some partner countries to respond accordingly, and that

continues to have negative consequences, especially

for the small economies of the Caribbean.

Trinidad and Tobago therefore stands resolute

with our developing country partners in calling for

what must be conceived of as the application of a

social conscience within the management of

globalization and its processes. As capital importing

economies, the developing countries of the Caribbean

are only too well aware, sometimes painfully so, of the

implications of capital shortage for the generation of

employment and the provision of housing, education

and health care for our citizens. And perhaps I speak

even for those yet unborn.

It is through softer trading arrangements,

increased financial flows and the consequent

empowerment of our citizens that we will be able to

realize the most central of all the Millennium

Development Goals, the eradication of poverty. The

implications are clear. The course on which some of

our European Union (EU) country partners are

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embarked will render the achievement of our

Millennium Development Goals more difficult.

In speaking of those goals our attention is now

drawn to Haiti, our newest CARICOM member, where

over 1,000 people died from the onslaught of

Hurricane Jeanne, further aggravating the tremendous

problems that that nation already suffers. Trinidad and

Tobago therefore welcomes the decision taken by the

Security Council in its resolution 1542 (2004) of 30

April 2004 to establish the United Nations Stabilization

Mission in Haiti. We also support the recent decision

by the Economic and Social Council to reactivate its

Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Haiti to promote the

coordination and development of a long-term

programme of assistance to that country. We believe

that those efforts by the international community will

contribute significantly to the stability and urgently

needed development of Haiti.

At this juncture, however, Haiti needs a

tremendous outpouring of international humanitarian

assistance. The same holds true for Grenada and

several other Caribbean States whose misfortune it was

to have been visited by “Ivan, the Terrible”. On

8 September, Hurricane Ivan descended on Grenada. In

less than two hours it had completely destroyed the

economy and infrastructure of Grenada, ravaging that

country beyond description. Ninety percent of the

buildings on the island were damaged or destroyed. A

primarily agricultural economy, dependent also on

tourism, all of Grenada’s crops disappeared with the

strong wind. CARICOM leaders were recently advised

by a Grenadian representative that today Grenada has

no gross domestic product.

Before visiting Grenada, Hurricane Ivan —

sowing varying amounts of disruption and

destruction — visited Tobago and Barbados. After

Grenada, it proceeded to Saint Vincent and the

Grenadines, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Cuba,

Bahamas and the southern United States. Everywhere

there was considerable damage, but Grenada and the

Cayman Islands were the hardest hit.

Before Ivan, there was Charley and Frances.

After Ivan came Jeanne, with death and destruction for

Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. A

number of CARICOM countries are now saddled with

the immense challenge of trying to restore normalcy.

Permit me to ask, to what extent have these

obvious climate changes been influenced by incursions

into space from planet Earth, or for that matter by

ecological imbalances caused by industrialization?

In the aftermath of the devastation visited on

Grenada, CARICOM countries have been rallying to

the assistance of that island, and must be applauded for

their massive outpouring of humanitarian aid that

continues to flow to Grenada. In that regard, permit me

to recognize and applaud the most appropriate response

of the Secretary-General.

Trinidad and Tobago pledges its support to our

beleaguered Caribbean neighbours, and we have thus

committed ourselves through direct financial and other

assistance. But what Grenada and Haiti require is well

beyond the region’s capacity to deliver. I urge the

wider international community and donor agencies to

respond adequately and to play their part. Help is

needed and needed now.

The catastrophic events of the present hurricane

season bring into sharper focus yet another dimension

of the vulnerability of Caribbean countries. The

January 2005 International Meeting in Mauritius to

review the implementation of the Barbados Programme

of Action must seek to comprehensively address the

new and emerging threats to the sustainable

development of small island developing States. The

international community should take note that a whole

new set of security issues have now arisen in the

Caribbean as a result of those developments.

The answer to so many of our problems lies in

multilateralism, if approached the right way. Belief in

and respect for multilateralism led to Trinidad and

Tobago’s respect for all major global and regional

forums. Today, we are active participants in the

creation of the free trade area of the Americas, which,

when realized, will stretch from Alaska in the north to

Tierra del Fuego in the south, creating a market of

more than 800 million consumers and generating

tremendous opportunity for economic and social

development.

Our region’s commitment to that hemispheric

integration process has led Trinidad and Tobago and its

partners in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to

propose our capital city, Port-of-Spain, as the ideal

location for the seat of the proposed permanent

secretariat of the free trade area of the Americas.

Unanimous regional support for this CARICOM

proposal would demonstrate the hemisphere’s

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solidarity with one of its smaller members and give

true meaning to the principle of the sovereign equality

of all States. It would further decentralize the

headquartering of major international and regional

organizations and enable a small island developing

State to place its resources at the service of the

hemispheric community. Accordingly, we look forward

to receiving the support of all our neighbours in the

hemisphere.

We remain pleased with the progress of certain

multilateral initiatives, including the New African

Partnership for Development, which I urge CARICOM

and African countries to support by exploring

opportunities to develop investment, trade, tourism and

regular transport routes between our region and the

African continent.

We also consider the establishment of the

International Criminal Court to be a major

achievement, and we urge partner countries to uphold

the integrity of the Rome Statute. The commission of

war crimes, genocide and other such crimes against

humanity has been facilitated by a global culture of

impunity. The people of the world will be safe only

when the perpetrators of such crimes know that

punishment is inescapable.

Trinidad and Tobago condemns all forms and

manifestations of terrorism, wherever and by

whomever they are committed. We are already a party

to the principal international legal instruments against

terrorism, and the Government will shortly take

parliamentary action to enact legislation honouring our

obligations with respect to the International

Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of

Terrorism.

As the international community continues to

confront the many threats to the survival of mankind,

the world’s political leadership must unequivocally

reaffirm its commitment to the United Nations so that

the United Nations can continue its role in fighting

injustice, inequality, inequity and intolerance

worldwide through resolute and speedy action, in

respect of its commitment to the ideals for which it was

founded.

Trinidad and Tobago is of the view that the issue

of United Nations reform takes on even more urgency

as the institution approaches the sixtieth anniversary of

its founding in 1945. We therefore look forward to

discussion of the Secretary-General’s recommendations

based on the report of the High-level Panel on Threats,

Challenges and Change, chaired by former Prime

Minister Anand Panyarachun.

In conclusion, I wish to propose that on 24

October, 2005, United Nations Day, a special

commemorative meeting of the General Assembly be

held in San Francisco, where our Charter was signed,

to reaffirm our commitment to the lofty ideals

enunciated some 50 years ago, which are still valid

today.