Trinidad provides arms for Guyana to fight gun violence
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| Published on Thursday, February 21, 2008 |
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GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AFP): Trinidad and Tobago is to provide "specialized weapons" and a helicopter to help Guyana combat a spate of violent mass-killings, Guyana's home affairs minister said Wednesday.
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| Guyana's Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee |
"The government of Guyana has been making every effort to procure the said weapons from other sources but without success," said the minister, Clement Rohee.
In the latest major violent incident in the South American country, gunmen killed nine civilians and stormed a police station, killing three policemen and stealing guns on Sunday.
No details have been provided about the types of weapons which Rohee said the government had been trying to acquire elsewhere.
Guyana's security forces do not have any working helicopters to conduct aerial patrols of the 83,000 square mile country including its vast Amazon jungle, savannahs, rivers, and mountains.
Through these, cocaine, arms and ammunition are smuggled, most of it shipped to North America and Europe.
In the wake of Sunday's brazen attack in the gold-mining township of Bartica, 80 miles southwest of the capital Georgetown, President Bharrat Jagdeo told residents there that Guyana's 5,000 police and soldiers were "stretched thinly."
Though they were highly trained and equipped, a major problem was lack of credible intelligence, he said.
"We have the special forces and the tactical services unit (of the police force) that will go and take on any criminal. It is to get an opportunity to engage them, that is where the intelligence comes in," said Jagdeo.
Provision of the weapons, he said, followed talks between himself and Trinidad and Tobago's National Security Minister, Martin Joseph, on how that country could help its sister Caribbean Community (Caricom) member state that has lost 23 people in two violent massacres already this year.
Police Commander Gavin Primo said late Wednesday that only one person has been detained for questioning in connection with Sunday's attack. | | | | Reads : 8 |
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