Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Grena­da's Gov­ern­ment has not yet de­cid­ed if it will al­low a US radar sys­tem at the Mau­rice Bish­op In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port (MBIA), since tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment is still on­go­ing.

That was the word yes­ter­day from Grena­da's Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell, who said the US had in­di­cat­ed they want­ed a re­sponse by a par­tic­u­lar time, but Grena­da hasn't been able to pro­vide that.

Mitchell al­so stressed, “It’s im­por­tant for me to say that as Prime Min­is­ter of the coun­try, we would not en­ter in­to any agree­ment which, from a Grena­da per­spec­tive, has any pos­si­bil­i­ty of vi­o­lat­ing Grena­di­an do­mes­tic law or vi­o­lat­ing in­ter­na­tion­al law.”

Mitchell gave an up­date on the sit­u­a­tion yes­ter­day at a sit­ting of Grena­da's Par­lia­ment.

This fol­lowed the US South­ern Com­mand’s re­quest in Oc­to­ber for Mitchell's Gov­ern­ment to tem­porar­i­ly in­stall radar equip­ment and as­so­ci­at­ed tech­ni­cal per­son­nel at the MBIA.

Grena­da lat­er stat­ed it was care­ful­ly as­sess­ing and re­view­ing the re­quest through tech­ni­cal con­sul­ta­tions with the Grena­da Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty and oth­er rel­e­vant agen­cies. Any de­ci­sion would be made on­ly af­ter all as­sess­ments were con­clud­ed, it was stat­ed.

Grena­da was among Caribbean coun­tries ex­press­ing con­cern about the US mil­i­tary build-up in the re­gion, and Mitchell had told the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly the re­gion must re­main a Zone of Peace.

Yes­ter­day, Mitchell, not­ing heat­ed pub­lic de­bate on the radar re­quest, ex­plained Grena­da has on­go­ing se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion and arrange­ments with the US and Grena­da’s re­gion­al part­ners on al­most all as­pects of law en­force­ment mat­ters, in­clud­ing com­bat­ting the drug trade and nar­cot­ic traf­fick­ing. He said that al­so some­times in­clud­ed the US South­ern Com­mand, there­fore co­op­er­a­tion with the US is an on­go­ing and per­ma­nent is­sue.

Mitchell said the re­quest to in­stall the radar is part of the broad­er re­quest for se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion. Some of this, he added, Grena­da has al­ready agreed to, but can­not dis­close in or­der to pre­vent crim­i­nals from get­ting in­for­ma­tion.

Mitchell said the on­go­ing de­bate on the radar is a clear in­di­ca­tion of the fact his Gov­ern­ment is ful­ly aware that, be­cause of the na­ture of the re­quest, “…that it could not pro­ceed to make a de­fin­i­tive ‘yes’ for the very rea­sons seen play­ing out in pub­lic.”

"Radar would dis­rupt air­port op­er­a­tions"

He said Grena­da's Gov­ern­ment ap­pre­ci­at­ed that the MBIA, by the sig­nif­i­cance of its his­to­ry to the pub­lic, evokes a lot of emo­tive re­ac­tions.

Not­ing the MBIA is a civil­ian air­port, Mitchell said it is there­fore not fit to treat with mil­i­tary-type op­er­a­tions.

“Al­so, any in­stalling of the radar would ob­vi­ous­ly dis­rupt the MBIA's op­er­a­tions, and we'd need tech­ni­cal ad­vice on whether or not it was fea­si­ble or ad­vis­able to do so.”

Mitchell said when his Gov­ern­ment stat­ed the US re­quest was be­ing “con­sid­ered”, what it was do­ing was pay­ing at­ten­tion to the tech­ni­cal as­pect of the re­quest and whether or not it could be ac­com­mo­dat­ed at the MBIA.

“That tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment is still on­go­ing and hasn't been com­plet­ed,” he added.

Mitchell said the US's re­quest in­clud­ed, first, an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the US South­ern Com­mand to as­sess the site. “They've done so and af­ter, they would have in­di­cat­ed there were two sites they were in­ter­est­ed in.”

“In light of the on­go­ing dis­cus­sions which we held with them on tech­ni­cal is­sues, they've come back and in­di­cat­ed they're per­haps in­ter­est­ed in one site.”

Mitchell said his ad­min­is­tra­tion wasn't able to give a re­sponse by the par­tic­u­lar time the US want­ed, since the Gov­ern­ment was not in a po­si­tion to sat­is­fy it­self re­gard­ing the safe­ty and oth­er tech­ni­cal re­quire­ments to have such equip­ment at the MBIA.

He not­ed that Grena­da has no mil­i­tary and there­fore its co­op­er­a­tion with the US has al­ways been in the con­text of law en­force­ment, “…and in the con­text of our do­mes­tic law and the con­text of in­ter­na­tion­al law.”

“There­fore, giv­en this was a mil­i­tary re­quest, we’d have en­quired as to the le­gal ba­sis up­on which the re­quest was be­ing made, and we’ve en­tered in­to dis­cus­sions on those is­sues, which are not set­tled.”

“Right now, the tech­ni­cal dis­cus­sions are large­ly what has been tak­ing place. That's the up­date I have. If there’s any­thing fur­ther, I as­sure the pub­lic we’ll not make any de­ci­sions on this mat­ter in se­cret and not dis­close it. And in any event, you can’t hide a radar if it's at the MBIA.”