Gail Alexan­der

Mount­ing calls for re­moval of the cur­few and the state of emer­gency will be dis­cussed to­day at a meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil which Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has sum­moned. Speak­ing at a me­dia brief­ing at Pi­ar­co Air­port af­ter her re­turn from Aus­tralia yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil would meet at 2.30 pm to­day. In the last few weeks, there have been calls from the trade union move­ment and oth­er groups to re­move the state of emer­gency and cur­few. In the busi­ness sec­tor, the T&T Cham­ber and T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) have both in­di­cat­ed that the cur­few should be re­moved be­cause of the up­com­ing Christ­mas in­to Car­ni­val sea­son, though the SoE is not as much of an is­sue.

Yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said while she had been over­seas at the CHOGM and oth­er stops, she had been briefed by min­is­ters about the mount­ing calls in T&T for re­moval of the SoE and cur­few. "My min­is­ters have been brief­ing me on the on­go­ing de­bate on whether to con­tin­ue or not," she said. "When we es­tab­lished the state of emer­gency, it was not a po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sion. "It was a de­ci­sion tak­en af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the pro­tec­tive ser­vices and there­fore any change in that sta­tus will be have to be af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with those pro­tec­tive ser­vice heads and I will be so guid­ed." Per­sad- Bisses­sar added: "In­deed, I have sched­uled a meet­ing to­mor­row at 2.30 pm of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil and that mat­ter will be up for dis­cus­sion.

"It is not with­in my knowl­edge nor ap­pro­pri­ate to say 'Yea' or 'Nay'. It has to be done based on the in­for­ma­tion of the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices of T&T and it is an item for dis­cus­sion to­mor­row." The PM al­so said the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er had a dead­line for re­port­ing on the is­sue of taped com­ments by Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er re­gard­ing the FI­FA/Bin Ham­man is­sue. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she will be briefed on that is­sue. Per­sad-Bisses­sar ar­rived home yes­ter­day af­ter­noon bear­ing news that $1 bil­lion had been de­posit­ed in T&T's bank ac­count from pay­ments owed by BP which she had ob­tained dur­ing her trip. This fol­lowed her talks with BP of­fi­cials in Aus­tralia and Lon­don.

She al­so said T&T will pur­sue dis­cus­sions with Nige­ria re­gard­ing air links. She said di­rect T&T-Nige­ria flights take on­ly five hours, while it cur­rent­ly takes much longer to get be­tween both coun­tries. T&T will al­so be sign­ing a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with In­dia re­gard­ing air links. Per­sad- Bisses­sar said the Gov­ern­ment had been in­vit­ed to In­dia and will pur­sue the ini­tia­tive then. She said T&T will al­so host a con­fer­ence of en­er­gy min­is­ters of the Com­mon­wealth next year to ex­plore strate­gies and at­tract in­vest­ment. Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said the Gaspin group was seek­ing a T&T-based ini­tia­tive to set up a plant to sell LNG to oth­er small Cari­com states.

She said the firm found the gas pipeline up the Caribbean, which had been sug­gest­ed by the PNM Gov­ern­ment, was not fea­si­ble. Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­fend­ed her trav­el­ling, say­ing as this coun­try's CEO, she had to mar­ket T&T. She said she had not trav­elled as much as oth­er Prime Min­is­ters. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was un­aware there were so many T&T na­tion­als liv­ing in Aus­tralia. She said her del­e­ga­tion had been host­ed by one group for Di­vali and T&T na­tion­als in Perth had launched a sec­tion of Tribe's Car­ni­val band. Dur­ing the press con­fer­ence, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy said yes­ter­day's Ex­press sto­ry about state he­li­copters was wrong. He list­ed nine in­ac­cu­ra­cies.