Stay out of player dispute, says Barbados prime minister

Owen Arthur, the Barbados prime minister, has said that he and his government have strong reservations about Caricom Heads getting involved in disputes between independent parties like the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the West Indies Players' Association (WIPA).

He did not deny that at one stage he found it necessary to leave a caucus meeting of Caricom leaders on Tuesday during an admittedly "heated session". But Arthur was most anxious to clarify that he returned to the session "after having a cup of coffee", and stressed his "right to speak freely and with candour---as is my style".

Arthur's explanation, geared primarily for recording by the Barbados Government Information Service (GIS) and state-owned Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), was in response to a news article in the region's media which focused on an initiative by Caricom leaders to resolve the current dispute between the WICB and WIPA.

Appearing under various headlines such as "Cricket Squabble - Bajan PM walks out of Caricom caucus", (Trinidad Express) - the article reported on angry exchanges between Arthur and his Grenadian counterpart, Keith Mitchell, who heads Caricom's Prime Ministerial Subcommittee on Cricket.

The exchanges became so sharp - Arthur prefers "frank" - that he rebutted what he described as an attack on "my integrity and that of my government". When told that prime minister Mitchell, who is currently in China, felt that he (Arthur) was accusing him of gross misrepresentation, "if not lying", in relation to a disagreement they had in March this year at the height of a financial sponsorship row involving the WICB, WIPA, Digicel and Cable and Wireless, the Barbados prime minister said: "I am the one who has been grossly misrepresented ... And I wish to make it clear that having returned to the caucus, it was the Barbados prime minister who contributed to the initiative to promote what I see as a good offices intervention by Caricom to resolve the current impasse that involves not only the WICB and WIPA, but also Digicel and Cable and Wireless [the two foreign telecommunication corporations]."

Asked it he had indeed used what some regarded as "indecorative language", Arthur said that he used language appropriate to the issue of contention in the interest of accuracy.

Prime minister Mitchell, who left the conference venue shortly after the cricket row, is expected to make a statement on his return from China this coming weekend. But already, other heads of government were reported to be engaged in behind-the-scenes efforts to "cool the temperature" between Arthur and Mitchell.

As far as Arthur is concerned, Caricom Heads of Government have "no right" to become involved in the kind of disputes in which WICB and WIPA and the two telecommunication corporations are involved. He noted that neither WICB nor WIPA has even an associate status with Caricom, and, therefore, at best, in the absence of an amendment to the Community Treaty, the Heads of Government cannot properly impose themselves to resolve the current impasse.

They could, however, use the "good offices" gesture by way of a proposed three-member committee, to seek informal discussions with the parties involved in an effort to resolve a crisis situation that affects the peoples of the region.

According to Arthur, Caricom does not now provide any funding for West Indies cricket and until such a time as they establish a special fund for development of cricket, they must be careful how they become involved with independent and private entities. Some of his counterparts, including prime ministers of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), among them Grenada's Mitchell, share the view that structured engagement between Caricom and the WICB was now necessary to prevent the game of cricket collapsing in crisis.