PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC):

The Trinidad and Tobago government yesterday gave its clearest indication that it would not change its position and be part of an oil initiative that Venezuela has established to assist Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries to meet their energy requirements in the face of heavy increases in the price of oil on the global market.

Prime Minister Patrick Manning told reporters that his administration would not sign on to the initiative - PetroCaribe - as his country remains committed to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

"We have convinced our CARICOM colleagues to make Trinidad and Tobago the FTAA headquarters," Manning told reporters. "They had gone out together with us to convince the Western Hemisphere system of this. How in the face of that could we now go and sign on to an agreement which scuttles the FTAA?"

A NEW ALTERNATIVE

He said the PetroCaribe initiative introduces a ne that President Hugo Chávez is promoting to be known as the Bolivaria for the Americas (ALBA), a new regional economic integration body.

He said his administration would not sign because ALBA "introduces a ne ... without any consensus on that in the Caribbean.

"The PetroCaribe agreement is part of a more comprehensive set of prescriptions that Venezuela is advancing in competition to the established Western Hemisphere system. They have proposed ALBA instead of the FTAA," Manning said.

At the end of the Fourth PetroCaribe Summit in Cienfuegos, Cuba, a call was made for Port-of-Spain to become more involved in the initiative.

A statement by the Belize government, which will host the sixth summit, noted that "PetroCaribe has proven to be more than a trade mechanism for oil supply and currently constitutes a strategic framework for energy security, also including cooperation to ensure efficiency and savings in the generation, distribution and consumption of energy."

Apart from Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados is the only other CARICOM state that has not signed the PetroCaribe accord.