BRIDGETOWN - When Caribbean Community leaders meet in Barbados today for a special session ahead of tomorrow's Caricom-Cuba Summit, a top priority agenda issue will be the establishment of the long-promised Regional Development Fund (RDF). Realisation of this often deferred project, enshrined in the new Caricom Treaty, is vital for disadvantaged economies to enhance their participation in the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME), scheduled to be operationalised in January 2006. Countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, (OECS) as well as Guyana and Belize, have been pressing for progress in the creation of the RDF, viewed as being integral to the creation of the envisaged "common economic space" for the 32-year-old Community. Today's closed informal session at the new Barbados Hilton Hotel - also venue for tomorrow's one-day Second Caricom-Summit in three years, is expected to result in a mandate for finance ministers on creation of the RDF in which the Caribbean Development Bank is playing a key role. The finance ministers, a number of them also prime ministers - including Trinidad and Tobago's Patrick Manning and Barbados' Owen Arthur - are scheduled to have a one-day meeting in Jamaica on Monday, December 12, hosted by Jamaica's finance minister Dr Omar Davies. In addition to finalising their position on the way forward for the RDF, the Community leaders will also carry out a check-list on CSME-readiness by member countries, at least for the single market component from next month, to be followed by 2008 with one integrated economy. There continues to be deep concern that, for all the reassuring official rhetoric, some countries are still to enact relevant legislation and comply with arrangements for CSME-readiness in 2006. Some leading regional economists and social commentators also have serious doubts about the emergence of a single economy in the absence of any attempt at political integration while member states continue to function separately as "sovereign states" of one Community. Political issues of importance to the Community to be discussed will include a proposed Caricom-African Union delegation to visit Haiti within the next fortnight. The primary objective of such a mission would be to assess the arrangements being made to ensure free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections, scheduled for next month. Originally, a meeting of the Caricom Bureau - the management committee of the Community that normally meets between the annual Heads of Government Conference and their inter-sessional - had been scheduled for today. The Community Secretariat, in consultation with heads of government, however agreed to transform the bureau's meeting into a special session of Community leaders assembling in Barbados for tomorrow's Caricom-Cuba Summit. When Cuban president Fidel Castro arrives this afternoon on his special Cubana jet with his delegation, the Community leaders will be locked in a session to deal with outstanding pressing matters since last July's regular Caricom Summit in St Lucia and, at the same time, review the draft agenda for tomorrow's summit with President Castro. Barbados' Arthur, host prime minister for the Caricom-Cuba Summit, is expected to leave the Hilton meeting of Community colleagues to head the welcome delegation for Castro's arrival at the Grantley Adams International Airport. On the draft agenda for tomorrow's Caricom-Cuba Summit, which was inaugurated in Havana in December 2002, will be cooperation on health, education, sports and culture, trade, security and terrorism. In contrast to the significant progress made in areas such as health and education assistance from Cuba, trade continues to be comparatively insignificant in terms of responses from Caricom's private sector. This is partly related to the ongoing United States trade, economic and financial embargo against Cuba, in existence for some 42 years, and contributing to painful difficulties in effecting payments in tradeable currencies. Reprinted from jamaicaobserver.com