MONTREAL, Canada: Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham poured cold water Thursday on the prospect of Canada being linked with the Turks and Caicos Islands, CanWest News Service reports.
A political union with the Turks and Caicos is not a priority for the Martin government, Graham told the Montreal Gazette's editorial board.
"Trying to find an institutional framework into which it would fit would be very complicated," he said.
The group of about 40 islands, of which eight are inhabited by a population of slightly less than 20,000, are an extension of the Bahamas chain and considered the last largely unspoiled and underdeveloped part of the Caribbean.
Annexation talk heated up recently after Prime Minister Paul Martin invited the islands' chief minister, Michael Misik, to Ottawa to discuss closer relations with Canada.
Source: Caribbean Net News
