PM TALKS TOUGH ON CRIME, DRUGS AT THE UN

Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer has called on the United Nations to
increase the flow of assistance to the Caribbean to deal with the
upsurge in crime, noting that "the bulk of violent crimes is drug related."

He further slammed countries like the US for its policy of deporting
criminals, calling it a "monstrous assault on several of our societies.

"It so happens that the bulk of narco-trafficking activity in our
region is linked to illegal drugs bound for North America and
Europe," the prime minister told the 62nd General Assembly of the
United Nations last Friday.

He said as a result of the role the Caribbean plays for the drug
traffickers as a transshipment point, the Caribbean is forced to pay
a high price "to protect societies to our north, and the Atlantic
from drug shipments headed their way.

"We urge the UN family of agencies, in recognition of the link
between globalisation and crime, to provide the Caribbean with
increased assistance in this area," PM Spencer told the United Nations.

PM Spencer went on to call for support from "individual member
states" particularly those "who practise a policy of criminal
deportation," in a direct reference to the United States.

"This practice parachutes graduates of metropolitan criminal systems
onto societies in which they often have no families, no social
network to assist in their re-entry into vulnerable Caribbean
societies from which they had long been exiled," he stated.

The country's prime minister further carved out a case for the UN to
move with urgency to strengthen and implant the various UN treaties
on small arms and light weapons.

He said the use of small arms by unemployed youth in the Caribbean
has had both disruptive and destructive consequences on the youth in
the region, and mainly through the fault of the territories where
the weapons are produced.

"Here, too, small developing states, which produce no weapons, are
confronted by the tragedy wrought by guns manufactured in countries
which fail to control, and which appear untroubled by the ease with
which their weapons of death cross international borders," PM Spencer stated.

"Even a miniscule increase in violent crime has a negative impact on
development in small island states," he added.