There is clear logic to the case made by Trinidad and Tobago's Prime Minister Patrick Manning for greater regional cooperation to fight the worsening problem of crime in the Caribbean.

What is surprising, though, is how Mr Manning posited the suggestion - with an absence of context. It was as if the idea was entirely new and raw, rather than an ongoing issue on which Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders have been less than aggressive in shaping into a cohesive whole and/or firm conclusion.

Indeed, this is a matter with which the Trinidadian leader should have been intimately acquainted, being the CARICOM leader who was mandated to spearhead security issues and having worked closely with Jamaica's former security minister, Dr Peter Phillips, on a regional security project.

At this stage, what we would have expected from Mr Manning is a clear status report on the initiative and a frank assessment of why the process has not advanced further.

CARICOM leaders had recognised that the crisis they faced was not of criminality narrowly defined; rather, it was a broader threat to national and regional security from domestic and transitional criminal enterprises. For while Jamaica's high murder rate was mostly related to domestic social and economic problems, it is clearly exacerbated by the global trade in narcotics in which, because of its geographic position, the island has become a global player. The same is true, to a greater or lesser extent, of Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, the two other countries where crime has reached epidemic proportions. And while these are the countries with the more severe problems, they are not the only CARICOM members under threat.

Almost all the CARICOM members are small island states with porous sea borders that gun and narcotics smugglers, with the money to buy support and loyalty, find easy to traverse; individual countries, with limited resources, infrastructure, technological capacity and manpower find it difficult to match and counter them.

In the circumstances, the grave danger, if not already the case, is that narco-terrorists can buy their way to power by proxy, gaining control of the state apparatus, already weakened by domestic criminality and other social and economic problems.

That is the context in which this newspaper, in the past, proposed the expansion of the Regional Security System that operates among Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States and Barbados as well as the establishment of an integrated Caribbean intelligence apparatus.

CARICOM governments began moving firmly in that direction ahead of last year's Cricket World Cup in the Caribbean, when regional security was at the top of the agenda because of fear of terrorism.

The region was putting new energy into the flagging regional security initiative, which had been launched without a clear definition when, for example, Jamaica's former police chief, Francis Forbes, was posted in Port of Spain to coordinate a regional security programme. Indeed, since the World Cup flurry, little has been heard of a British-supported programme to train customs and border security personnel and to coordinate their efforts.

We are glad, therefore, that Mr Manning has put back on the agenda the idea of a pan-Caribbean law enforcement unit. But, hopefully, this is not about a reinvention of the wheel. Perhaps he can tell us where things now stand.