Mini summit
ends today
Smaller islands, Dutch hope to sign agreement
PHILIPSBURG/THE HAGUE--Delegations of Bonaire, Saba, St. Eustatius and the Dutch Government should be signing a final declaration today, Wednesday, paving the way for direct relations of the three smaller islands with the Netherlands.
Talks that started in The Hague Tuesday have been going well, said Commissioners Will Johnson of Saba and Roy Hooker of St. Eustatius on Tuesday. There are still some minor points parties hope to solve this morning, after which signatures should be affixed to an agreement.
Commissioner Johnson said parties didn’t “get out” of the entire agenda on Tuesday. But, he added, it was good for the islands to show the Dutch Government that they had been doing their homework. He anticipated “quite a few changes” still to be made to the final document.
Commissioner Hooker said there were “still some things” that had to be sorted out, including matters that had been discussed in Bonaire during preliminary talks last week, but had not been incorporated in the draft agreement. He too anticipated some changes and amendments.
Without going into details about the issues the smaller islands still had some difficulty in accepting, Hooker said parties would have to come to a compromise today. “If we can get a breakthrough on those issues, make them workable, we are well positioned for an agreement,” he told The Daily Herald Tuesday night.
Both Hooker and Johnson said they believed there was willingness at the table from the side of the Dutch. “I’m positive we’ll get there,” said Johnson. “We can’t get everything in the first round.”
Johnson said the idea for now was to make the relation the best it could be and leave further improvement up to future generations. He said the new relation meant not only responsibilities for the islands, but also for the Netherlands. He said the direct relations would also have an impact on the relations the Netherlands had with other countries. He said the Netherlands would have to explain why the three smaller islands of the Netherlands Antilles had entered direct relations with it.
In the end it is the people of the smaller islands that count, said Hooker. “We have to see what’s good for our people,” he said, adding that all parties had to also sell their decision politically.
According to Hooker, the agreement was going to be a compromise. “There is no way, and we told the Minister (Atzo Nicolaï, ed.) that in Bonaire, that he’s going to get all he wants. We won’t also get everything we want. It has to be a compromise and it has to be workable for all of us,” he said.
Johnson had nothing but praise for Dutch Minister of Administrative Reform and Kingdom Relations Nicolaï. “I am very impressed with him. He understands the material. He is knowledgeable, flexible. I give him high credit,” he said. Johnson also praised the Netherlands for “going all out” to host the three islands.
In his opening speech, Johnson said he was very happy to note that finally direct talks had become a fact, four years after Saba insisted on this during a constitutional summit in Bonaire in October 2002. He said developments had gone into high gear after delegations of the smaller islands visited the Netherlands three weeks ago.
Johnson said he hoped parties would be able to “crack” the “hard nuts” that Nicolaï had mentioned in Bonaire last week. He said cracking nuts was part of the daily reality of governing Saba. (Suzanne Koelega)
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