The President of Suriname, Ronald Venetiaan, has cautioned descendants of African slaves that a full-scale push for reparations from Europe could be counter-productive.

Suriname's president Ronald Venetiaan

"I think we have the potential, we have the energy, the opportunity to build something for ourselves and I think that's what we should do," he told BBCcaribbean.com.

"I don't want to waste energies talking to the Europeans, to the White man, to settle something with him."

In his address to the opening of the anti-racism Global African Congress (GAC) being held in Suriname on Friday night, Venetiaan urged African descendants to help repair the damage caused by slavery.

Whites

"Reparation starts within you…Look for your own sun, look for your own hot sun out of the African root, out of the tradition, out of the culture that has come from your continent," he told an estimated 400 people.

The GAC is being attended by representatives from South America, the Caribbean, South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya. It was established during a 2002 conference in Barbados and is billed as a follow-up to the 2001 U.N. anti-racism conference in South Africa.

The Barbados conference voted to evict whites and Asians from the deliberations, prompting delegations from Russia, Cuba, South Africa, Colombia and France's overseas territories to walk out.

The Surinamese president said that he did not oppose people clamouring for reparations because some Europeans would be willing to address the claims for slavery.

"You are bringing in that intervention, that interference and I think that you need to be very careful," he told BBC Caribbean Service..

But Coordinator of the Pan African Caribbean Congress, David Commissiong said reparations could be achieved without external intervention by European countries.

"I can't see that at all. Right now, because of our relative powerlessness and poverty, these countries have intervened and are very much involved in our affairs in practising strategies of divide and rule, in continuing to exploit our resources," he told BBCcaribbean.com.

Commissiong said major achievements so far included the UN Conference on Racism declaring that slavery was a crime against humanity and the call for reparation was legitimate.

Foreign debt

"We have to fight for it but we can see that we have made progress from the days when reparation was only spoken about by activists on the fringes of power but now we have reparation taken seriously," he said.

He said reparations could include foreign cancelling the foreign debt of African countries.

Suriname boasts a rich African heritage preserved by at least 70 000 descendants of runaway African slaves. The conference ends on Wednesday.,