A donor conference will be held for for the Caribbean islands affected by Hurricane Ivan. Barbados foreign minister Dame Billie Miller and Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon have both said Caricom needs international assistance to help Grenada and the other islands affected by hurricanes. A similar conference for Haiti in July resulted in aid pledges of over $1.5 billion. Dame Billie who addressed the United National General Assembly on Monday made a special plea for Grenada and said that Caricom alone could not afford to help the country rebuild its economy. "Can you begin to imagine the implications when a small state is reduced to rubble in less than a day," she said. "Terrorists could hardly do a more effective job, yet these factors are never taken into account when GDP is computed. "In response to this devastation, Caricom heads of governments developed a priority programme for the rehabilitation of Grenada, Carriacou and Petit Martinique. But the reality is Caricom by itself does not have the financial resources to cope. We call for an international donor conference to help Grenada." Meanwhile speaking from St Kitts, where the Commonwealth Finance Ministers are meeting, Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon told BBC Caribbean Radio the donor conference will take place next week during a meeting with the World Bank. "You can bring the global countries together and say, here's a country like Grenada that's been 95% devastated and other countries have had a lot of damage. What can you do, how can you do it and when can you do it?" He said the Commonwealth Finance Ministers Meeting in St Kitts is a great opportunity for Caribbean ministers to make appeals for aid in person, which is more likely to yield results. "When you bring them all together like you have in St Kitts, it's certainly a lot easier for the PM from St Kitts to say this is a case where our colleagues have suffered immensely, we need your help. "And when you're making a special appeal to finance ministers and not to some official by telephone or email, it does make a difference. People are often prepared to be more generous if they're confronted with a situation face to face which they will be here in the Caribbean." Ninety percent of homes and business were destroyed and 38 were killed in Grenada as a result of Hurricane Ivan. Caricom has agreed on measures to put Grenada back on the road to social and economic viability including meeting its international financial obligations until the end of 2004. SOURCE: BBCCARIBBEAN.COM