One of the greatest honours anyone can experience is to be selected to represent one's country. It is regrettable that on far too many occasions, the national objective of selecting the best representatives has been thwarted by a foreign power exercising its sovereign rights without showing any regard for convention, or respect for the dignity of another sovereign state.

If we accept that national representatives are ambassadors, then the rejection of a nation's ambassador must be seen as an insult. The USA's practice of refusing visas to our national selectee should not be accepted with a smile. It is an insult to our nation, and we must let the USA know that we interpret it as such. I doubt if they would refuse a visa to an English, Australian, Polish or Russian selectee. It is full time that our Ministry of Foreign Affairs take up this matter with the USA and have a protocol established whereby it is known that national representatives have the full backing of the nation, and we resent our country being deprived of the services of these ambassadors because someone in the immigration department thinks he or she is going to run off into "heaven".

In sports, one of the accepted principles that governs selection is that officially designated selectors are responsible for the selections. No other person or group should determine who represents the country. What experience has shown is that in Jamaica's case, our national teams are finally determined by the USA if the team is going to play in the USA or even if it has to pass through that country. The argument of national security and sovereignty will be placed up front as the mitigating factors for the violation of this very important principle.

While giving the utmost respect to the sovereign right of all nations to determine who may or may not enter their boundaries, and the right to determine who they consider a security risk, this must be weighed in the balance of the relationship that exist between the nations involved and very important, what real or potential security risk is involved.

Muutual respect

Mutual respect should allow states to treat seriously any request from a nation for its nationals to be granted visas to facilitate them to represent their country. The fullest cooperation should be the norm, and the right to refuse should only be exercised where there is impelling evidence of security risks, or very clear non-observance of agreed guidelines relating to requests for visas for national representatives.

Any country that has undertaken to host an international event should be called upon to give an undertaking to accommodate all selectees of participating nations. I consider it beyond the boundaries of discourtesy to refuse a visa, which is required to facilitate a national representative passage through a friendly country. There must be a way for sovereign states to take care of these matters so that neither our friend and neighbour's security is endangered nor injury is inflicted to our pride as a nation.

I am, etc.,

LUCIUS C. WHITE

Kingston