Saint Vincent and the Grenadines maintains close ties to the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom, and cooperates with regional political and economic organizations such as the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and CARICOM. St. Vincent and the Grenadines is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, the Organization of American States, and the Association of Caribbean States (ACS).
As a member of CARICOM, St. Vincent and the Grenadines strongly backed efforts by the United States to implement UN Security Council Resolution 940, designed to facilitate the departure of Haiti's de facto authorities from power. The country agreed to contribute personnel to the multinational force, which restored the democratically elected government of Haiti in October 1994.
In May 1997, Prime Minister Mitchell joined 14 other Caribbean leaders and U.S. President Bill Clinton during the first-ever U.S.-regional summit in Bridgetown, Barbados. The summit strengthened the basis for regional cooperation on justice and counternarcotics issues, finance and development, and trade.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines maintains close relations with Cuba, which provides a number of scholarship and other exchange programs for Vincentians, particularly in the field of healthcare. It also has diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan) instead of the People's Republic of China.
Saint Vincent protests Venezuela's claim to give full effect to Aves (Bird) Island, which creates a Venezuelan EEZ/continental shelf extending over a large portion of the Caribbean Sea.
Saint Vincent is a transshipment point for South American illicit drugs destined for the US and Europe.
Famous quotes containing the words foreign, relations, saint and/or vincent:
“Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had no juice in them more than the singers.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“So soon did we, wayfarers, begin to learn that man’s life is rounded with the same few facts, the same simple relations everywhere, and it is vain to travel to find it new.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Upon Saint Crispin’s day
Fought was this noble fray,
Which fame did not delay
To England to carry.
On when shall Englishmen
With such acts fill a pen,
Or England breed again
Such a King Harry?”
—Michael Drayton (1563–1631)
“Lincoln, six feet one in his stocking feet,
The lank man, knotty and tough as a hickory rail,
Whose hands were always too big for white-kid gloves,
Whose wit was a coonskin sack of dry, tall tales,
Whose weathered face was homely as a plowed field.”
—Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943)