PRIME MINISTER P. J. Patterson went to Cuba yesterday, his office said, to attend a major conference on sustainable development, poverty reduction and environmental preservation.
Several other world leaders and heads of international organisations are at the conference which is taking place in Havana, the Cuban capital. The conference is reported to be a follow-up to the United Nations Conference on Environmental Development, which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992.
Mr Patterson is to address the conference today. Accompanying him is Dean Peart, Minister of Land and the Environment.
According to a news release from the Prime Minister's office, he and the other participants are meeting for "the Sixth Session of the United Nations Convention to discuss how to halt the degradation of the earth's land and water resources and counter climatic changes which cause serious droughts and which lead to the spread of desertification." The convention which Jamaica acceded to in 1997, was one of the outcomes of the Rio Conference.
Mr. Patterson will return on Wednesday. Portia Simpson Miller, Minister of Local Government, Community Development and Sport, is in charge of the government during his absence.
