?SASCHA WIL­SON

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning has dis­missed spec­u­la­tion that there was more to his meet­ing with Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day to­day at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's. Ques­tioned dur­ing a walk-about at Or­chid Gar­dens, Pleas­antville, yes­ter­day, Man­ning in­sist­ed that all that would be dis­cussed is con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form and crime. Told that peo­ple were ques­tion­ing the tim­ing of the meet­ing, he said it came about be­cause af­ter ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic of what was in­volved in the work­ing doc­u­ment on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form the Gov­ern­ment now have to dis­cuss it with the Op­po­si­tion.

With re­spect to the oth­er is­sue, he said it was Pan­day who re­quest­ed they dis­cuss the crime sit­u­a­tion. Man­ning said: "It is a time­ly idea be­cause there are some is­sues that are be­ing con­sid­ered right now by the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil with which I would like to bring him up to date." Asked to elab­o­rate, he added: "There are a num­ber of leg­isla­tive mea­sures the Gov­ern­ment is con­tem­plat­ing by the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil which I want to dis­cuss with him be­fore I dis­cuss it with any­one else." Man­ning, who is ex­pect­ed to leave the coun­try af­ter the meet­ing, said At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie al­so would be present.

He said Je­re­mie might bring some­one with him but he did not iden­ti­fy the per­son. Asked what were some of the Pleas­antville res­i­dent's com­plaints, Man­ning said they com­plained main­ly about the hous­es. He said that was ex­pect­ed in any new de­vel­op­ment, but he as­sured their prob­lems would be ad­dressed. Un­em­ploy­ment and most of the things "we read in the news­pa­pers" did not arise, he said. Fol­low­ing the hour-long walk, a closed door cot­tage meet­ing was held with res­i­dents. This is the third walk in the San Fer­nan­do dis­trict in the past week.