Richard?Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is dis­miss­ing claims by Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona that he (Row­ley) con­sent­ed to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon meet­ing with him on Sep­tem­ber 5. He is al­so deny­ing an­oth­er claim by Car­mona that he leaked a con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ment of the meet­ing to the me­dia.

Car­mona made the claims dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent on Wednes­day.

He said he had held a meet­ing with Dil­lon, the Chief of De­fence Staff and the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice on Sep­tem­ber 5 to dis­cuss na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters. How­ev­er, Car­mona, who is Com­man­der-in-Chief of the T&T De­fence Force, said he had in­di­cat­ed to Row­ley his in­ten­tion to hold the meet­ing at least three times and had re­ceived the PM's bless­ing.

But speak­ing at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at his St Clair of­fice yes­ter­day, Row­ley de­nied the claim.

"For the record, I was un­aware of any such de­vel­op­ment (meet­ing)," he said, say­ing he felt he was du­ty-bound to the pub­lic to set the record straight.

The PM said he was in To­ba­go on Sep­tem­ber 5 when he re­ceived a call from Dil­lon at 9.30 am, adding Dil­lon told him he was re­quest­ed to meet with the Pres­i­dent.

"That was the first time I knew of any re­quire­ment or any in­ten­tion of the Pres­i­dent to speak with the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty," Row­ley said.

He said he was "sur­prised" and "asked the min­is­ter what is this (meet­ing) about," adding that Dil­lon in­di­cat­ed he "did not know and was not in a po­si­tion to tell me any­thing oth­er than the Pres­i­dent had asked to see him."

The PM said he thought the meet­ing might have been some­thing per­son­al and told Dil­lon to seek more in­for­ma­tion.

"I told him (go) and find out... I couldn't have imag­ined it had any­thing to do with a full-fledged na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty meet­ing chaired by the Pres­i­dent. I thought it was a per­son­al, pri­vate (thing)... the Pres­i­dent has fam­i­ly, I as­sumed it was some­thing along that line. That's why I told him to go and find out. I don't want that con­fused with grant­i­ng 'ap­proval' for any na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty meet­ing."

Row­ley said Dil­lon then "left the coun­try with­out com­mu­ni­cat­ing with me the next morn­ing (on a sched­uled trip) (and) he did not re­turn to the coun­try un­til the fol­low­ing Mon­day and I would have seen him the day af­ter that." He in­sist­ed there was no oth­er con­tact with Dil­lon dur­ing that pe­ri­od.

Row­ley said he sub­se­quent­ly saw in the news­pa­pers "that there was a ma­jor na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty meet­ing in­volv­ing the Chief of De­fence Staff, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (act­ing) and this meet­ing was chaired by the Pres­i­dent."

The PM re­called be­ing "alarmed and con­cerned" about the mat­ter but main­tained he "did noth­ing (and) I said noth­ing as the min­is­ter was out of the coun­try."

Row­ley said he sub­se­quent­ly went to his of­fice and found "con­sid­er­able doc­u­men­ta­tion re­lat­ing to this meet­ing, (in­clud­ing) a 30-point doc­u­ment cov­er­ing vir­tu­al­ly every area of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and a cov­er­ing let­ter ad­dressed to me and signed by His Ex­cel­len­cy on this de­vel­op­ment."

Dis­play­ing what he said was the doc­u­ment he re­ceived from Car­mona, Row­ley said: "It speaks of the very im­por­tant con­sid­er­a­tion of con­sent re­quired by the Pres­i­dent for the pro­vi­sion of the se­cret meet­ing to be made avail­able to me."

He said Car­mona's let­ter con­tained "a phrase that had me very con­cerned and the phrase was that he had the con­sent of the at­ten­dees to tell me what hap­pened at the meet­ing."

The PM said he sub­se­quent­ly sought le­gal opin­ion on the line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion in­volv­ing the Min­is­ter, Prime Min­is­ter and Pres­i­dent. Ac­cord­ing to Row­ley, the Se­nior Coun­sel, who was Mar­tin Daly, re­ceived all the doc­u­men­ta­tion he had on the mat­ter. Row­ley said he was ad­vised by Se­nior Coun­sel that "my con­cerns were well found­ed."

Row­ley said via the head of the pub­lic ser­vice, he trans­mit­ted his views on the mat­ter to Car­mona.

Leak not from me

On Car­mona's al­le­ga­tion that he leaked a con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ment on the meet­ing to the me­dia, Row­ley said: "I have done no such thing."

Row­ley said he was un­aware of any pub­li­ca­tion about the con­tents of the doc­u­ments sent by the Pres­i­dent to him be­ing leaked.

"Had the ac­com­pa­ny­ing doc­u­ment been in the pub­lic do­main, you (me­dia) would have in your pos­ses­sion the 30-point is­sues dealt with in the three-hour meet­ing.

"I have not seen that in the pub­lic do­main so I do not come to the con­clu­sion that it is out there and there­fore I de­ny that I have leaked any such doc­u­ment com­ing from His Ex­cel­len­cy, the Pres­i­dent."

The PM said he de­lib­er­ate­ly did not give any com­ments to the me­dia when ques­tioned about "the car­ry­ings-on and the al­le­ga­tions be­ing made about mat­ters at the Pres­i­dent's house­hold," adding he "kept my­self and my of­fice away from those de­vel­op­ments."

Yes­ter­day, he said based on what was told to him about the Pres­i­dent's news con­fer­ence on Wednes­day and from yes­ter­day's news­pa­pers, he had to "ad­vise the pub­lic on the facts of this sit­u­a­tion as known to me and as sup­port­ed by the doc­u­men­ta­tion in my pos­ses­sion."

He said he did not wish "to drag this mat­ter on and does not wish to en­gage in any ban­ter with the Pres­i­dent. I sim­ply want to put on record my knowl­edge on this mat­ter and what the doc­u­men­ta­tion con­tains."

Row­ley in­sist­ed: "If this doc­u­ment was sent to you, you would have seen that nowhere in the epis­tle that was sent to me from Pres­i­dent's House was there any ref­er­ence of any pri­or ap­proval for what was com­ing to me."

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the Prime Min­is­ter's dis­clo­sures yes­ter­day, com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er at the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, Theron Boodan, said: "His Ex­cel­len­cy did not see the post-Cab­i­net brief­ing. At the time he was at a func­tion swear­ing in a judge to the Court of Ap­peal."

Boodan said as soon as "the Pres­i­dent sees what was said there should be a re­sponse."