ROSE­MARIE SANT

Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona is in­sist­ingth­at Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley "sup­port­ed"his meet­ing with Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­tyMin­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon. The Pres­i­dent toldthe me­dia yes­ter­day that "on three oc­ca­sion­sI in­di­cat­ed to the Prime Min­is­ter my in­ten­tion­to hold a meet­ing with the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­alSe­cu­ri­ty and he sup­port­ed it."

He is al­so rais­ing ques­tions about how a"pri­vate mis­sive" he sent the Prime Min­is­ter­fol­low­ing the meet­ing found it­self in the hand­sof oth­er peo­ple, say­ing: "I did not dis­close thede­tails of the meet­ing in ac­cor­dance with strict­con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

On­ly those who were pre­sen­twere aware and the Prime Min­is­ter."Speak­ing to the me­dia for over an hour yes­ter­day,Car­mona ad­dressed the is­sues in thep­ub­lic do­main, in­clud­ing the pur­chase of winecar­ry­ing the pres­i­den­tial seal, the pur­chase of­jew­el­ry and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's re­port whichraised an is­sue with the al­lo­ca­tion of $2.6 mil­lio­nand his meet­ing with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­tyMin­is­ter at the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent.

Of the meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 5 with Dil­lon,Chief of the De­fence Staff Rod­ney Smart an­dact­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Harold Phillip, which was al­so at­tend­ed by his aide-de-cam­pand se­nior le­gal of­fi­cer, the Pres­i­dent said:"I have al­ways been com­pli­ant with the­do­c­trine of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers and am­more than aware of my con­sti­tu­tion­al re­mitwith re­spect to oth­er branch­es of the ex­ec­u­tive­and in­deed of the Gov­ern­ment."

It is ex­act­ly for that rea­son he said "on three­oc­ca­sions be­fore­hand, I in­di­cat­ed to the ho­n­ourablePrime Min­is­ter my in­ten­tion to hol­da meet­ing with the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty,in the in­ter­est of of­fer­ing sug­ges­tions on cer­tain­per­ti­nent is­sues in this re­pub­lic and he sup­port­e­d­it."Car­mona said "at the on­set of the meetin­gI men­tioned the Prime Min­is­ter's sup­port forthe said meet­ing and this was con­firmed bythose present."

He made it clear, "as I did then at the said­meet­ing that I did not im­pose my­self or myviews on the Cab­i­net or the ho­n­ourable PrimeM­i­nis­ter, nor did I un­law­ful­ly in­ter­fere with­the ex­er­cise of the func­tions of the Prime Min­is­terand or the mem­bers of the Cab­i­net."He said con­trary to re­ports, he did not "sum­mon­the meet­ing." Any­one who knows him,he said, knows that he does not en­gage in thatlead­er­ship style.

"I am about ser­vice lead­er­ship. There wereno de­mands made of the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter­with re­spect to time. We worked around his­time," Car­mona said.He said the mat­ters dis­cussed at the meet­ing "with the stat­ed sup­port of the Prime Min­is­ter,were mere­ly sug­ges­tions and pos­si­ble so­lu­tion­sthat were of­fered for con­sid­er­a­tion in my ca­pac­ityas Head of State and Com­man­der in Chiefof the Armed Forces."He said much had been said about the"al­leged con­sti­tu­tion­al im­pro­pri­ety of my hold­ing­such a meet­ing with­out em­pha­sis to thep­ur­pose of the meet­ing."

But he said as a cit­i­zenof the coun­try "and like every oth­er cit­i­zen ofthis re­pub­lic, I can le­git­i­mate­ly of­fer sug­ges­tion­swith­in my con­sti­tu­tion­al re­mit to al­le­vi­ate cer­tainis­sues that plague us as a na­tion."He said as Pres­i­dent he act­ed with­in theremit of the Con­sti­tu­tion, say­ing: "By virtue­of sec­tions 74,80 and 81, this meet­ing was con­duct­ed­with ref­er­ence to the ho­n­ourable PrimeM­i­nis­ter be­cause I had his sup­port to hold the­meet­ing.

PRI­VATE SEC­RE­TARY PRA­MATI

Pres­i­dent Car­mon­adeemed him­self an"im­por­tant crewmem­ber in the ship of­s­tate," say­ing he could­not see things wron­gand re­main qui­et. He said: "If there­are cur­rents in theriv­er I can­not bein­dif­fer­ent to its dan­ger to the swim­mer that isunaware." He said he was "a sim­ple man with abig heart in an ex­cep­tion­al job," and is aprac­tis­ing be­liev­er in ser­vice lead­er­ship. He ex­plained that Pra­mati Noe "was his­pri­vate sec­re­tary from in­cep­tion." He said she­was suit­able for the job since she had ter­tiarye­d­u­ca­tion and was flu­ent in Span­ish, Ital­ian, Ger­man and Eng­lish.