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PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (AP) – All kidnap suspects who demand a ransom will be denied bail following a deal which was struck between the Gov-ernment and Opposition to pass the amendment to the Bail Bill in Parlia-ment on Friday.

This was agreed to following a second round of crime talks at Whitehall yesterday between teams of both parties.

The deal was struck after Prime Minister Patrick Manning, Attorney General John General and National Security Minister Martin Joseph met for just under two hours with a UNC team comprising Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday, UNC leader Winston Dookeran and Siparia MP Kamla Persad-Bissessar.

Speaking with reporters afterwards, Jeremie said the Opposition will give the Bail Bill the special majority vote of 24 needed to pass it.

Persad-Bissessar said the Bill will essentially allow the police to hold a person accused only of kidnapping for ransom without bail for 60 days.

The onus will be on the State to bring the person to trial within this period. If it fails to do so, then the accused will have the right to apply to a High Court judge to get bail, she said.

This ensures that a person’s civil liberties will “not be unduly restricted,” she added. Under the Bill also, a person who has been arrested three times on a serious offense involving violence will be denied bail on the third arrest, also for 60 days, she said.

She also said the Opposition’s support of the Bail Bill was temporary, since it is accompanied by a Sunset Clause.

Deeming this a first for Trinidad and Tobago’s laws, Persad-Bissessar said under this clause, at the end of a year, the amendment will lapse. Par-liament will then assess if it worked well, and will vote on it by special majority if they so decide, she said. The Bill was just one out of five amendments in the legislative package Government wants the Opposition to support, however.

The other four Bills, which include the Constitution Amendment Bill and Police Reform package, again failed to get the UNC’s support.

Persad-Bissessar said the Opposi-tion will not back the proposals for the Cabinet to appoint a Police Commis-sioner and members of the Police Ser-vice Commission, since they believe this would lead to an abuse of power.

Jeremie said, though, that when the crime talks resume at a date to be fixed by Manning, he is sure some consensus will be arrived at with regards to the Police Reform package.

Panday assured that with respect to this hope of the Attorney General, “we will try our best.”

CARICOM ministers recommend

US$10 Million fund

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) – Re-gional finance ministers agreed at a meeting in Kingston yesterday to a US$10-million development fund, to be used to address any economic dislocation caused by the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME), which will be implemented on January 1.

Davies. a critical new step in the process of regional integration

Details of the meeting of the finance ministers, which took place at Kingston’s Jamaica Pegasus Hotel, are expected to be released at a press conference today.

Speaking at the opening of yesterday’s meeting, Caricom Secretary Gen-eral Edwin Carrington said the key issues of the one-day meeting were to decide, among other things, on:

• The size of the fund;

• Contribution by member states, the private sector and the donor community, including the Diaspora;

• Loans/grants composition of the fund;

• Use of the fund;

• Ways of accessing the fund by regional governments and by the private sector;

• Management of the fund; and

• Relationships to other funds.

A source told the Associated Press that the recommendations of the ministers are to be studied by a technical team, compromising representatives from the Caribbean Development Bank, C Y Thomas, Prof Norman Girvan, Havelock Brewster and all central bank governors in the region. This team is expected to examine and determine how funding would be arranged and how states would access the fund.

The technical team, the source said, will present its report to Caricom’s Council for Finance and Planning, scheduled for Jamaica on January 24. The council will then send its recommendations to the first inter-sessional meeting of the heads in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad from February 9 to 10.

That meeting of Caricom heads will follow the operationalization of the sin-gle market component of the CSME, with at least four countries on board - Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Tri-nidad and Tobago. St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines are also hoping to be on board by then.

In his remarks at the opening of the meeting yesterday, Jamaica’s finance minister Omar Davies hailed the de-velopment of the fund as a “critical new step in the process of regional integration.” He said it was one of the key functional requirements necessary to make the process workable.

Government condemns security breach

St. GEORGE’S, Grenada (AP) – The Grenada government said Mon-day that it viewed as a “very serious breach of prison security” the taping of a lecture given by prisoner and former deputy prime minister, Bernard Coard, on the proposed Caribbean Community (Caricom) Single Market and Economy (CSME).

Acting Commissioner of Prisons, Wesley Beggs, in a letter sent to Pastor Stanford Simon, said taping the lecture on 25 Oct., given by Coard, who is serving a life sentence for his part in the death of leftwing Prime Minister Maurice Bishop in 1983, high-lights a very serious breach of prison security.

In the letter, copied to the Confer-ence of Churches and the National Security Minister Einstein Louison, Beggs said that “no permission was given for the taping and broadcasting of this lecture therefore prison regulations were broken.”

In a statement on Monday, Louison expressed “grave concern” about the situation, which he said, “highlights a very serious breach of prison security which occurred on the 25th of October 2005.”

“The Minister of National Security has given his full support to the action taken by the Acting Commissioner. Minister Louison said the country’s laws and its national security must be kept in tact and that breaches like this could not be tolerated. He also pointed out that the confidence and trust which exist between the Prison Com-mission and Pastor Stanford Simon have been undermined,” the statement added.

Dominican Republic demands apology over protest

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) _ Haitians scuffle with police during a protest in front of the national palace in Port-au-Prince, on Monday. The clashes were sparked during violent protests against the visit of Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez.

The Dominican Republic’s ruling party demanded an apology yesterday from neighboring Haiti after violent pro-tests disrupted the Dominican president’s one-day visit.

Protesters angry over the treatment of Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic hurled stones and burned tyres in the streets Monday as Domi-nican President Leonel Fernandez tried to leave the presidential palace in down-town Port-au-Prince.