Call for island polls spurned

Press, 19 November 1982, Page 8

Call for island polls spurned

NZPA-Reuter Kingston Grenada rejected pressure from its neighbours yesterday to hold free elections in a row over human rights which marred the second day of a Caribbean summit conference. Leaders of the 12-nation Caribbean Community were deeply divided on a human rights motion tabled by Barbados which seeks to commit all members to basic principles such as holding regular elections. The Grenadian Prime Minister, Mr Maurice Bishop, who took power in a coup in 1979 and has given no indication when elections will be held, accused other Caricom members of trying to isolate his country. Challenging his colleagues’ concept of human rights Mr Bishop said that the human right was the right to life and there were people getting killed in Caricom countries today. The right to vote was not an important element. He called for a regionwide poll to determine where human rights were being observed in the Caribbean.

Mr Bishop said that Grenada’s revolution had not taken place in order to call elections but for food, justice, arid housing. Grenada intended to maintain relations with the Socialist bloc. Grenada became an independent nation within the Commonwealth in 1974. Mr Bishop overthrew the Government of Sir Eric Gairy in March, 1979, and made himself Prime Minister. Grenada is the most southerly island of the Windward group, with an area of 344 sq km.

The Guyanese President Mr Forbes Burnham, told reporters that the meeting, the first in seven years, was

discussing the possibility of declaring the Caribbean a zone of peace and signing a mutual defence pact in the face of external and internal threats. The Barbados Prime Minister, Mr Tom Adams, said that his Government had been negotiating a mutual defence, pact with St Lucia, St Vincent, and Dominica after emergency attacks in the region in recent years.

The leaders continued discussion on increasing trade co-operation in the face of a world recession and reduced demand for their commodity

exports. Conference sources said that the group would probably call on the United States Congress to speed up the review of President Ronald Reagan’s Caribbean Basin plan, which would provide ?US3SO million in aid and investment incentives. There haye been indications that Congress would not approve the full proposal this year as expected.