BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC):

A senior Barbados government minister has blasted the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) for the manner in which it negotiated with the International Cricket Council (ICC) to host the Cricket World Cup in the Caribbean.

Deputy Prime Minister Mia Mottley charged that the region's cricket governing body agreed to stipulations which had succeeded in curtailing the Caribbean festival flavour traditionally present at cricket grounds throughout the region.

"I have had to watch this with a certain degree of pain because this is not a Barbadian act; it is not even a government act; but it is how the West Indies Cricket Board allowed themselves to so negotiate a host agreement with the ICC that all of us now have to deal with the consequences thereto.

No pride

"But it gives me no pride that Caribbean people negotiating on behalf of the region for the WICB could have accepted some of the obligations that they have accepted in the host agreement," said Mottley, the head of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) security committee overseeing the games.

Speaking in Parliament on a motion to take note of the bicentennial of the abolition of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, Mottley said there were some elements of the agreement which other countries accepted but which Barbados rejected. She, however, did not mention specifics.

Opposition parliamentarian Dennis Kellman said that it was regional parliaments which passed Sunset Legislation to accommodate the event and therefore legislators should share the blame for stifling the Caribbean flavour at the seven-week tournament.

"We are enslaved by the ICC. We have destroyed the West Indies Cricket team by passing Sunset Legislation stopping our people from behaving in a particular way and we have said to the world that our people in the Caribbean are rude, cannot be trusted, and if you allow them with certain instruments in the stadia, they will behave in a particular way," Kellman added.