In speeches and interviews in Washington, DC, this week, Britain's Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, struck the same notes that he has been strumming for some time now.

The score though, is more expansive, demanding greater urgency along the frets. Not only is there a demand for a reshaping of the global financial architecture, but an urgent need to drag the world out of the economic miasma and the re-opening of credit to emerging markets.

Essentially, the British premier is not saying anything that any number of people have not said, including our own prime minister, Bruce Golding, who articulated Jamaica's call for the reshaping of the Bretton Woods institutions when he addressed the UN's general assembly last September.

A real opportunity

Mr Brown, however, assuming he has President Barack Obama on his side, has a real opportunity to pursue his agenda, including the fashioning of some kind of global standard to prevent, in the future, behaviour by banks and financial institutions that led the world into its greatest recession for more than 70 years ago. Next month, Mr Brown will host a meeting of the Group of Twenty (G20) to discuss the global crisis.

Jamaica, unfortunately, will not be at the table. Neither will any other member of the Caribbean Community (Caricom).

There is a chance, perhaps, that Mr Golding's vision, and his concerns will, in a fashion, be articulated by leaders of one or more of the larger developing countries who will be in London. But only of a fashion.

For we do not know what exactly Mr Golding and his Caricom colleagues now want, and require, particularly with circumstances having grown far more complex since the Jamaican leader's speech in New York.

Then, for instance, the dangers to the Jamaican economy were apparent, but there was still, among many ministers, a state of denial. We had not had the formal downgrade by Moody's, with the likelihood that Standard and Poor's will follow suit. Those credit markets are now firmly shut.

Nothing done

We have, many times in recent months, in these columns, recommended to Mr Golding, that, as leader of Caricom's politically most-influential country whose economy is most at-risk from the crisis, that he drives an effort to develop a clear shopping list for the community. Not much has happened, except that in January the community's council for finance and planning ministers asked a group of government and quasi-official agencies to frame some kind of programme. The process, however, lacked precision and urgency.

All is not loss, however. Ahead of Mr Brown's G-20 meeting will be the Summit of the Americas to take place in Trinidad and Tobago. Senior American officials, most likely Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, if not President Obama, will be present.

Caricom must make itself heard, and not in some nebulous way. The community must go to Port-of-Spain with specific ideas for action that speak to its special interests that are not subsumed into hemispheric blandness.

We urge Mr Golding, as the Caricom PM with lead responsibility for external relations, to use his position to demand an urgent summit of the community to address the global crisis and to define clearly what we want the world to do that is in our interest. Mr Golding, more than most, should know that there is no time to tarry.

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