I VERY MUCH regret the misleading information that has wrongly attributed remarks to me about 'ethnic cleansing' in Barbados.

I make it absolutely clear that I never made even an insinuation about this in relation to Barbados, or any other country in the Caribbean.

The only reference I made to the notion of 'ethnic cleansing' was in a speech on 25th June to a meeting organized by the Caribbean Court of Justice in Trinidad.

In doing so, I was criticising an editorial in [a] regional newspaper for intimating such a notion and I was making the very specific point that no Caribbean leader would countenance it.

Antithesis

My remark was the very antithesis of the connotation that has been put on it.

In a very short remark in a speech lasting over an hour to an audience of the Judiciaries of the region on the impact of 'globalisation', I lamented events which were threatening the cohesion of CARICOM and putting it at risk.

Among these was the intimation in the editorial (to which I have referred above) that one of the 'ravages' of unmanaged CARICOM migration could be "a disturbance of the existing equilibrium among races'.

What was said

What I said was the following;

"It is always a sadness when, however propelled, our societies are caught in a downward spiral of separateness with fellow West Indians cast as outsiders; those times when, as Annalee Davis (the Barbadian Researcher) has described them, we become "locked into nationalist crevices . . . and exclusivist cultural legitimacy".

"We are at such a time, and both policies and practices are deepening Caribbean divides.

'The knock on the door at night' is not within our regional culture; still less are intimations of 'ethnic cleansing'.

"No Caribbean leader would countenance such departures from our norms and values."

Comment's purpose

My purpose in making the comment was to remind us all that the basic premise of our regional lives is that West Indians are one people, and to recall us - as I have done throughout my life - to the vital importance of our integration and cohesion in a highly competitive world which has little regard for small countries - that, as Prime Minister David Thompson of Barbados put it recently, "integration is the last best bet for the Caribbean".

I certainly did not allude to genocidal practices (Bosnia style) which are wholly alien to our Community, and especially alien to Barbados which I have proclaimed globally to be a standard bearer of human values within our region.

Any 'slur' on Barbados was in that editorial; not my repudiation of it.

To any who misunderstood what I said- or did not read what I said - I sincerely hope this statement clarifies the matter.

l Sir Shridath Ramphal QC is a former Commonwealth Secretary-General.