EDITORIAL - Good signs for US-Jamaica relations

We are heartened by a photograph that appeared on the front page of this newspaper on Tuesday, under the caption, 'Bruce rolling with the big boys'.

Taken at last week's special G-8 summit in Canada - to which a handful of leaders of developing countries were invited - it shows our own Bruce Golding seated at the conference table laughing broadly, apparently at some quip by America's president, Barack Obama. Both men appeared at ease and genuinely engaged, to the exclusion of the Senegalese president, Abdoulaye Wade, and his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, who were in their own conversation.

We interpret from the picture, and the clear lack of tension between President Obama and Prime Minister Golding, that with the Dudus Coke fiasco behind us, relations between Jamaica and the United States are on the mend. Our interpretation is indeed consistent with the views of foreign policy analysts in Kingston and Washington.

Sensible retreat

Mr Golding's sensible retreat from obduracy and illogic by allowing the extradition of Mr Coke, the notorious west Kingston don, has no doubt influenced changing US attitudes towards Jamaica. What, however, is not to be underestimated is the contribution of Jamaica's new ambassador to the United States, Audrey Marks who, ironically, formally presented her credentials to President Obama on Monday - only days after the president's jovial encounter with Prime Minister Golding.

Ms Marks has been in Washington for only a month, but from all credible assessment, to use a metaphor appropriate to Jamaica's athletic tradition, she has hit the ground running. Part of Ms Marks strength as Jamaica's top diplomat in Washington, as we noted at her appointment, was her wide range of contacts in the United States. She has not been afraid to use them to Jamaica's benefit.

Indeed, one photograph from the reception she held after her White House credentials ceremony is one of the ambassador's warm, informal greeting of former US secretary of state Colin Powell, who has the respect of President Obama and is influential in the US political establishment.

General Powell is of Jamaican parentage, but while he perhaps maintains emotional connections with this country it has not, for whatever reason, translated into much policy support or lobbying effort. Hopefully, Ms Marks will be able to bring aboard, even if not overtly, General Powell and other such personalities.

Policy backing

She will, however, need policy backing from home. The administration, for instance, cannot engage in the kind of adventurism that attended the Coke affair which Mr Golding, indirectly and circuitously, promised President Obama at G-8 would no longer be on Jamaica's agenda.

The prime minister raised with the global leaders the problem of transnational crime, its effect on countries like Jamaica and the social and economic vacuum left in poor communities when criminal benefactors - such as Coke, perhaps - are removed. Mr Golding appealed for technical and economic help.

Ms Marks made much the same point Monday evening, and we expect that she will effectively make the case with US officials while selling Jamaica to the private sector as a place to invest. But as convincingly as she may argue and as hard as she may work, Ms Marks' efforts will ultimately come to naught if there is an absence of appropriate behaviour or effective policy on the part of the Government.

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