Guyana defends cooperation with US over airport plot
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| Published on Thursday, June 7, 2007 |
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GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AFP): Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo Wednesday defended his government's decision to cooperate with US authorities investigating an alleged plot to blow up New York's international airport.
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Guyana's President Bharrat
Jagdeo. AFP PHOTO |
"Too much of our future is tied up with the linkages that we have with that country (the US) so we are not going to tolerate any of this madness here," Jagdeo said at the opening of a tourism conference here.
Guyana "can't help but being friendly" with the United States because of its business ties with the US which is also home to at least 300,000 Guyanese, he added at the conference attended by US Ambassador David Robinson.
Former Guyanese parlimentarian Abdul Kadir and another Guyanese man, Abdel Nur, are among four suspects being held by police in Trinidad and the United States after police foiled the plot to blow up pipelines and fuel tanks at John F. Kennedy airport.
Two other suspects are Russell Defreitas, a former employee at the JFK airport who was born in Guyana, and a Trindadian man Kareem Ibrahim, held with Nur and Kadir in Trinidad.
De Freitas was arraigned earlier this week in a New York court while Kadir, Ibrahim and Nur are facing extradition to the US from Trinidad.
Robinson sought to ally fears that the image of the South American country could be sullied because of the alleged plot.
"The fact that some of the alleged plotters are Guyanese nationals is an immaterial factor. They could have been anywhere and remember also this plot was home-grown," Robinson told reporters on Wednesday.
"It was a US citizen who came up with this plot. I don't think it is fair to say this somehow reflects ill on Guyana, it certainly doesn't."
Police commissioner Henry Greene said local police were unaware of any radical Muslim links in Guyana, where at least 10 percent of the population of 750,000 people are Muslims.
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