Four key Grenada Ministers quit

Press, 20 October 1983, Page 6

Four key Grenada Ministers quit

NZPA-Reuter Bridgetown

The crisis over Grenada’s leadership worsened yesterday after the Foreign'Minister, Mr Unison Whiteman, said he and three Cabinet colleagues had quit the Government and were demanding the reinstatement of the detained Prime Minister, Mr Maurice Bishop. Mr Bishop, aged 39, has been under house arrest since last Friday. His hardline Marxist opponents say he defied the collective will of the central committee of the ruling New Jewel Move-

ment, the Leftist party he co-founded 10 years ago. Mr Whiteman said in an interview with the Caribbean news agency Cana and a Barbados radio station yesterday that he and the Ministers, Mr Lyden Ramdhanny (tourism), Mr Norris Bain (housing) and Mr George Louison (agriculture) had resigned. The Education Minister, Jacqueline Creft, was expected to follow suit, he said.

“The people of Grenada are demanding that com-

rade Bishop be restored as leader of the government,” said Mr Whiteman. Mr Bishop formed the N.J.M. in a 1979 coup which ousted sir Eric Gairy. He then established strong ties with Cuba and the Soviet bloc which soured relations between the Caribbean island and the United States.

Mr Whiteman said that central committee members led by Bernard Coard—considered a Marxist ideo-logue-had refused to meet him and the other Ministers

to discuss their proposals for a reconciliation. He said: “Comrade Coard is now running Grenada . . . running the show from his house.”

The State-controlled Radio Free Grenada, which for the last few days has carried only the views of the Coard faction, broke the pattern to report that about 300 young people demonstrated peacefully yesterday in support of Mr Bishop at the island’s Pearl airport. Mr Bishop is a powerful orator and popular with the

masses. Mr Whiteman said: “We feel that we have to disassociate ourselves from this Government and that we have to explain to the people of the country and the world the serious situation and the refusal of the Government to deal with it”

He said that Mr Coard and his allies appeared prepared to use force and provoke violence to achieve their objectives. He added. “They may be about to come for me."