(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and Lithuania charted a historic course of diplomatic relations when the first Ambassador of a Baltic country, Her Excellency Raimonda Murmokaite, was accredited to CARICOM on Monday, 17 November 2014.
In welcoming the Lithuanian envoy, Deputy Secretary-General Ambassador Manorma Soeknandan described the occasion as “quite an honour.”
“You have been Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) which means that you are familiar with our issues such as climate change; disaster relief and preparedness; energy; tourism; information and communication technologies for education and the prevention and control of non communicable diseases.”
Since Lithuania is a small middle income country like many of CARICOM, Ambassador Soeknandan said it would fully understand another issue of importance to the Community - ‘graduation’ from development financing. The Community therefore looked forward to Lithuania’s advocacy in the European Union on such issues.
Ambassador Murmokaite said that her country had only been back on the world stage for 24 years, but she wished that the relationship it was now forging with CARICOM could have come earlier.
“I wish we could have taken this step sooner, but we are taking this step now and I am happy to be the very first Ambassador of Lithuania to be accredited to CARICOM.”
The Lithuanian Ambassador added she was pleased with the opportunity to work with the CARICOM Secretariat and with the CARICOM Ambassadors in the UN, noting that she already enjoyed an excellent relationship with them.
“We do have excellent relations with CARICOM Ambassadors in the UN. It does take time to build relationships, I understand it is not an issue of one year, two years or three years, we do have to invest in that.”
“You have fantastic missions; you have great Ambassadors who take up great responsibilities in UN… Looking into the future of sustainable development, post 2015, you have a lot of people who are very well at making the voices of small countries known,” Ambassador Murmokaite told the Deputy Secretary-General.
CARICOM has identified the deepening of foreign policy coordination as one of its strategic priorities
for 2015-2019.
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