| Date: Sat 03-Dec-1994 Paper Page: 10 Publication: Sun on Saturday Byline: Terry Ally BARBADOS' Foreign Service officers began three days of consultations yesterday designed to turn them into a crack team of shrewd economic and trade negotiators. Foreign Minister Billie Miller made it clear that the diplomats will have to work as a team, "produce rather than consume", and "quickly become self-financing". She told a Heads of Mission seminar yesterday that the creation of a Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and International Business was not "an agglomeration of autonomous entities; but a strategically and operationally integrated enterprise, a major thrust of which will be to make Barbados into a premier centre of excellence for international business and financial services." Miller said that a review of the entire diplomatic and consular representation aboard has been initiated and encompasses location, structure and staffing, purpose and function. "At the end of it, we want every mission to know clearly what its objectives are, to have the resources to pursue those objectives and to be held accountable for achieving those objectives." Foreign Service personnel will also receive professional training and re-training in all the skills necessary to equip them to function in the "new economic diplomacy" which involves "mobilising investment and promoting the economic interest of the country." The conference, the first to be convened in ten years, will be briefed on Barbados' foreign and economic policies. |