Law officials from the Caribbean Community (Caricom)...

Law officials from the Caribbean Community (Caricom) nations met in Jamaica to discuss how to set up and pay for a proposed Caribbean court to replace the British Privy Council as the region's final court of appeal. Leaders of the 13-member Caricom group drafted a proposal in March to create the Caribbean Court of Justice within two years. But the Jamaican Bar Association has expressed strong reservations about the region's readiness to establish the court, arguing among other things that Caribbean governments lack the money for proper funding. Barbados's Attorney General David Simmonds, chairman of the Caricom Legal Affairs Committee, said participants at the committee's three-day meeting in Kingston would examine a report analysing the proposal. "Although I'm pleased to hear that, I would have hoped that more urgency would have been afforded to the thought of producing a budget for the court," Derek Jones, president of the Jamaican Bar Association, said.