Obama at US-CARICOM Summit
Obama discusses trade, investment, security, good governance, energy and climate change at US-CARICOM Summit
FACT SHEET: U.S.-CARICOM Summit – Deepening Energy Cooperation
Thursday, President Obama met with Caribbean leaders in a U.S.-CARICOM Summit in Kingston, Jamaica. President Obama reaffirmed the importance of our relationship with the region, and the United States’ commitment to partner with Caribbean countries to advance economic development, security, and good governance. Leaders discussed a broad range of issues, from our important trade and investment linkages to security cooperation.
The leaders’ discussion focused on the importance of improving energy security, reducing energy costs, and fighting climate change. This follows robust engagement on these issues over the last year, including the White House Caribbean Energy Security Summit hosted by the Vice President in January 2015 and the launch of the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative (CESI) coordinated by the Department of State. The United States is deepening this collaboration through the following initiatives:
Clean Energy Finance Facility for the Caribbean and Central American (CEFF-CCA): The United States will launch a $20 million facility to encourage investment in clean energy projects. The facility will provide early-stage funding to catalyze greater private and public sector investment in clean energy projects. It will draw on the expertise of the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) in coordination with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of State.
Energy Security Task Force: The United States will partner with Caribbean and Central American countries in a task force to evaluate progress in our cooperation and identify concrete steps to advance energy sector reform, regional integration, and clean energy development.
Clean Energy Finance: In January, OPIC formed a dedicated financing and insurance team to advance development of the Caribbean renewable energy sector. OPIC is in advanced talks to finance a 20 MW solar farm in Jamaica, and has already committed financing to Jamaica’s largest private-sector wind farm, a 36 MW facility in Malvern, St. Elizabeth Parish. OPIC is actively looking for opportunities to support solar and wind energy projects in Jamaica and throughout the broader Caribbean region.
Clean Energy Technology Collaboration: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Jamaica’s Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy, and Mining signed a statement of intent today to advance our shared interest in sustainable energy. Areas for potential cooperation include energy conservation and efficiency, energy infrastructure, micro grids and energy storage, fuel diversification, and energy policy.
Clean Energy Economy Transition: The Department of Energy assembled U.S. and Caribbean stakeholder working groups to look at opportunities ranging from clean energy, efficiency, diversifying electricity generation, clean transportation and energy education, at the Caribbean Clean Energy Technology Symposium, held in St. Thomas in March. The working groups will report on progress at the 2016 Symposium to be hosted by Jamaica. Also, the Department of Energy will launch a new Energy Scenario Planning Tool¸ building on its Energy Transitions: Island Playbook, to help island communities plan clean energy projects that are most likely to attract investment, capitalize on local resources, and meet energy needs.
Greening Tourism: The tourism industry is the largest energy user in the Caribbean. The Department of Energy, with its Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and OPIC are undertaking the Caribbean Hotel Energy Efficiency and Renewables (CHEER) initiative, which supports projects to improve energy and water efficiency as well as the exchange of best practices in the hotel and tourism industry. USAID is launching a complementary project focused on the Eastern Caribbean that will develop new financing tools for energy efficiency and renewables.
Jamaica Clean Energy Program: USAID is working with the Government of Jamaica and the private sector on a new integrated Clean Energy Program to establish the pre-conditions for clean energy development, optimize renewable energy integration, and accelerate private-sector clean energy investment.
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Obama: Caribbean leaders dispute claims they are risky financial centers
(Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday said some Caribbean leaders he has met during his trip to the region complained their countries were unfairly singled out as risky financial centers.
Obama, speaking to young people in Jamaica, said he told the leaders he would look into those complaints. He said the United States needed to make sure that offshore financial havens were not used for money laundering or tax avoidance. (Reporting by Emily Stephenson in Washington; Editing by Eric Beech)
For more on this story go to: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/09/usa-caribbean-obama-financial-idUSL2N0X62FV20150409
In Jamaica, Obama seeks to reassert U.S. leadership in Caribbean
From Business Insider
KINGSTON, Jamaica (Reuters) – President Barack Obama arrived in Jamaica on Wednesday to attend a Caribbean summit seeking to reassert U.S. leadership in the region at time when oil-producing Venezuela’s economic clout may be receding.
As the first U.S. president to visit Kingston since Ronald Reagan in 1982, Obama faces the challenge of convincing Caribbean island leaders that Washington is genuinely re-engaging after a long period of perceived neglect of its smaller, poorer neighbors.
Obama arrived in the middle of Jamaica’s Carnival week but will have little time to take in the revelry during a 24-hour visit expected to be dominated by discussions on energy, security and trade with the 15-member Caribbean Community, or Caricom.
Some analysts say a key reason why Washington is suddenly paying attention to the Caribbean Basin is that it wants to wean the islands off dependence on cut-rate Venezuelan oil that Caracas has long used to wield influence in the region.
Most Caricom members participate in Venezuela’s discounted Petrocaribe oil program, but Caracas now finds itself in growing economic distress due to low oil prices.
“As Petrocaribe is unraveling, the U.S. is taking advantage,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington. “The Caribbean islands have to look elsewhere for energy.”
The Obama administration launched the Caribbean Security Energy Initiative last year, and in January Vice President Joe Biden hosted Caribbean leaders in Washington to discuss alternative energy sources such as wind and solar.
From Jamaica, Obama travels to Panama to attend a Western Hemisphere summit, where Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has made clear he will confront Obama over new U.S. sanctions.
Obama will also cross paths at the Summit of the Americas with Cuban President Raul Castro for the first time since the two announced a historic opening between their countries in December.
Communist-ruled Cuba will also be on the agenda in Kingston, with leaders largely supportive of U.S. détente with the region’s most populous island nation.
In Thursday’s talks, Obama will try to show that even though he remains preoccupied with crises elsewhere in the world, he is determined to focus on the Caribbean.
“We absolutely feel that the Caricom region does deserve greater attention and engagement from the United States,” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, told reporters. “At times people feel like the United States has not engaged these countries significantly as we should.”
Rhodes said the talks would yield “concrete outcomes” but he declined to provide details on any new regional initiatives.
With Caribbean countries saddled with high unemployment, many are eager for a re-energized U.S. partnership. “We have no jobs here. Jamaican people just want jobs,” said Marie Sherood, 32, a craft vendor on the beach in Kingston.
(Additional reporting by Aileen Torres-Bennett in Kingston and David Adams in Miami; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Sandra Maler)
IMAGE: U.S. President Barack Obama waves as he boards Air Force One to travel to Jamaica from Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, April 8, 2015. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst Thomson Reuters
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Obama advised to take Cuba off terror list
By Laurent Thomet, Andrew Beatty, AFP From Business Insider
US President Barack Obama arrives in Panama City on April 9, 2015 for a summit of leaders from the Americas, where thawing ties with Cuba top the agenda
Panama City (AFP) – President Barack Obama moved closer to removing a major hurdle in the US-Cuba diplomatic thaw, as a lawmaker indicated he could take Havana off a list of state sponsors of terrorism.
As Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro landed in Panama for a historic encounter at the Summit of the Americas, it emerged that the State Department has recommended to take Cuba off the blacklist.
Their foreign ministers, John Kerry and Bruno Rodriguez, were to have their own historic talks late Thursday, with US officials saying they would hold the highest-level diplomatic meeting since 1958.
Earlier, Obama said he would not make a formal announcement until he has the recommendations in full, but a leading member of the Senate foreign relations committee indicated the department’s advice was clear.
Senator Ben Cardin said the move was “an important step forward in our efforts to forge a more fruitful relationship with Cuba.”
Having Cuba’s name on the list has been a major sticking point in negotiations aimed at reopening embassies, which closed after the Cold War-era foes broke relations in 1961.
The blacklisting means that Cuba is subject to a ban on weapons exports and economic aid as well as financial sanctions that make it difficult to get World Bank and other loans.
Cuba was first put on the list, which also includes Syria, Sudan and Iran, in 1982 for harboring ETA Basque separatist militants and Colombian FARC rebels.
During a visit to Jamaica before heading Panama, Obama said the overall talks on establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba was moving along as he expected.
“I never foresaw that immediately overnight everything would transform itself, that suddenly Cuba became a partner diplomatically with us the way Jamaica is, for example,” he said. “That’s going to take some time.”
“I do think that we’ll be in a position to move forward on the opening of embassies in respective countries,” Obama said.
An announcement about the terror list during the 35-nation Summit of the Americas on Friday and Saturday would add to the historic symbolism of the gathering.
The meeting will mark the first time that a Cuban leader attends the event, heralding a new milestone in the diplomatic thaw.
“Cuba’s presence on the list is seen in Cuba as an unfounded insult and a lie,” said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a Cuban analyst at New York University.
Mark Weisbrot, director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research think tank, said removing Cuba from the list would be “just the beginning” of efforts to normalize relations.
“This is just a bare-minimum first step,” Weisbrot said, noting that Havana also wants Congress to lift the US embargo and Washington to abandon the Guantanamo Bay naval base on Cuba’s eastern edge.
– US Congress review –
Cuba’s removal from the list would not be immediate. Congress would have 45 days to decide whether to override Obama’s recommendation.
US lawmakers who have been critical of the diplomatic detente could seize on the review of the list to further attack Obama’s Cuba policy.
US Senator Ted Cruz, a Cuban-American Republican running for his party’s presidential nomination, has been among the most vocal critics of the rapprochement.
A scene of lingering tensions among Cuban dissidents and government sympathizers emerged on Wednesday in Panama City.
Some 100 Castro regime supporters jeered dissidents as they arrived at a Latin American civil society forum in a Panama City hotel, shouting “sell outs” and “imperialists” before leaving the event.
US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf condemned “those who use violence against peaceful protesters.”
– Maduro petition –
Analysts have pointed to another potential problem for Obama at the summit — the sanctions he imposed against Venezuelan officials accused of human rights abuses in an opposition crackdown.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Havana’s main ally in the region, hopes to bring a petition signed by 10 million of his citizens urging Obama to lift his executive order.
Other Latin American nations have criticized the order, which calls Caracas a US national security threat.
Seeking to ease tensions, Obama said the United States does not see Venezuela as a threat. The White House says the legal term is a requisite for sanctions.
IMAGE: US President Barack Obama arrives in Panama City on April 9, 2015 for a summit of leaders from the Americas, where thawing ties with Cuba top the agenda
© AFP Raul Arboleda
For more on this story go to: http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-obama-advised-to-take-cuba-off-terror-list-2015-4#ixzz3X1MA9GZn
