Above: Tom Kelly

By the Caribbean Journal staff

The United States and the Bahamas are set to sign a new Memorandum of Understanding on Counter-Piracy, the US State Department announced this weekend.

Tom Kelly, the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, is traveling to the Bahamas from Monday to Wednesday for talks with senior Bahamian officials, and will sign the agreement on Tuesday.

The talks will focus on a “wide range of political-military issues” and to launch new information sharing and technical assistance agreements, the State Department said.

The US is the 2013 chair of the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia.

In a statement, the US said it “welcomes this new agreement with the Bahamas, which is a major flag registry state, as well as a source of mariners working in the global shipping industry.”

Kelly will also sign a Memorandum of Understanding for the Cooperative Situational Information Integration Initiative, which supports information sharing among partners in the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative.