Dominica has not agreed to ALBA’s Falkland shipping ban

Dominica: Dominica has joined Antigua in seeking to clear the air on an ALBA statement supporting Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands, in that Latin American country’s dispute with Britain, according to a Dominica NewsOnline report.

The statement ends with a sentence suggesting that member states of the Bolivarian Alliance (ALBA) “support the decision made by the countries of the region to ban ships with the colonial flag imposed on the Malvinas from entering their ports”.

The DNO stated that Prime Minister, Roosevelt Skerrit, said on Monday after returning from the ALBA summit in Caracas, Venezuela, that his government was not too concerned about the banning of ships aspect of the declaration, because there were no Falkland Island ships calling on Dominica. However Antigua and Barbuda, another OECS member of ALBA, has since distanced itself from that part of the declaration.

In a just released statement, the Dominica Government says it “has not granted its support to any call for the region to ban ships with the colonial flag imposed on the Malvinas from entering its ports, as stated in the said declaration…Dominica therefore disassociates itself from statements regarding the banning of ships carrying the flag of the Falklands from entering its ports”.