BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – A former regional trade negotiator Friday described as a “stab in the back’ for region, the agreement reached between the European Union and Latin America for ending a 16 year banana trade war.

“The European Union wants this thing to go away. They don’t want to have to be bothered anymore about Caribbean bananas (and) they don’t want to be fighting arbitration at the WTO (World Trade Organisation) with Latin America, so they have come to an agreement,” said Sir Ronald Sanders, a former diplomat and regional trade negotiator.

The new accord slashes import taxes on bananas from Latin America from Euro 176 Euros (US$262) a tonne to Euro 114 (US$170) over the next seven years.

“That makes Caribbean bananas totally uncompetitive in the market because at that tariff our cost of production, shipping and all that simply can’t make it there,” Sir Ronald said predicting that “we will be wiped out of that market”.

Earlier this week, CARICOM Secretary General Edwin Carrington said that the decision by the Latin American countries to consistently seek to reduce the position of Caribbean banana producing states on the European market “raises for me a peculiar question”.

“We are in the process of speaking about closer cooperation between Latin America and the Caribbean. We met in Jamaica on the sixth of November…and many of the countries that are party to that discussion… are the same parties whose struggles are pushing us out of the European market, our very limited access to that market in terms of quantity.”

The CARICOM Secretary General said these Latin American countries, such as Ecuador, already enjoy “massive benefits of the market…and yet we are being pushed out while we on the other side are speaking about cooperation and fraternal relations.

“It does really raise some serious questions in my mind as to how we are going to reconcile those two positions,” he said, noting that in Jamaica there was agreement for a meeting to be held in Mexico in February next year at the level of heads to bring about coordination and harmonization between the Rio Group of Countries and CARICOM.

Trinidad and Tobago’s trade minister Mariano Browne, speaking in Geneva on Wednesday on behalf of the CARICOM countries, criticised the banana accord telling journalists the fact remains that the resolution of this long-standing trade dispute will result in the decline of a major CARICOM export.

But he said that even though the Caribbean was willing to agree to the conclusion of this dispute it was insisting that the outcome on bananas cannot be divorced from the treatment of other preference erosion products and that there is a package, carefully crafted among African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP), EU and the Most Favoured Nations (MFN) suppliers that addresses the treatment of 62 agricultural products should be favourably addressed.

“CARICOM considers this to be a final package and will therefore not accept any attempts to alter its provisions, in particular with respect to major CARICOM export products, such as rum and sugar,” said Browne.

Browne said that CARICOM was also demanding that the EC-funded Banana Accompanying Measures (BAM) should be at an appropriate level for the budget period 2010-2013.

“The CARICOM demand for financial compensation is also based on Paragraph 150 of the draft Agriculture modalities that calls for preference granting countries to provide adjustment measures to mitigate preference erosion in affected developing countries.

But Sir Ronald said that the Caribbean’s position of the EU compensation package to the ACP grouping “will be very small” and agreed with demands that Europe should increase its compensation package to Euro 250 million (US$371.3 million).

“Frankly I think that is just about as much as they would get from the European Union,” he said, adding that the game is now over.

“After this 200 or whatever million they give, there will be nothing further. So the Caribbean really now has to become serious about agriculture….they have to look for niche markets outside of the Caribbean if they can but they also have to find a way of selling some of the agricultural products that they produce either domestically or within the region”.

Sir Ronald said that Caribbean countries that have agricultural capacity “ought to be selling it to the countries that don’t “ citing as an example, Antigua and Barbuda “that will never be an agricultural country…but could become a market for agriculture for Dominica  as Barbados could be a market for agriculture from Dominica…”.