Americans helped T&T during 1990 Muslimeen uprising

Winston Dookeran said Tuesday American hostage management experts helped the NAR government with the hostage crisis in the July 1990 coup attempt.

Dookeran was the Deputy Prime Minister and was released from the Red House to try to work out a deal to free the hostages and return peace and stability to the country.

Speaking at the probe into the coup attempt, he said the government asked for the outside help because it did not want to allow soldiers to storm the Parliament.

He said the experts advised the government that defusing such a crisis was a science. The operation, he said, took five days and the Americans returned home within an hour of the release of the hostages.

Dookeran said one of the key issues in involving the external assistance was to determine if the Muslimeen acted alone or whether they had others connections as part of a wider international conspiracy.

He said his position was that any "ideological debate" was irrelevant. "I had to solve a problem and I did not see this in ideological terms, but in practical terms,” he said, noting that some of his colleagues rejected the idea of outside interference.

Dookeran said that was a contradiction.

He also told the commissioners he got calls from British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her Canadian counterpart, Brian Mulroney as well as from Jamaican PM P.J.Patterson on behalf of CARICOM.

Dookeran said CARICOM offered troops to deal with the insurrection and he accepted the offer.

While Dookeran took over the role of the leader of government during the five days of the crisis he referred to himself as chairman of a cabinet committee, not acting prime minister.

He told the commission one of the issues that has emerged out of that experience is that there should be a clearer constitutionally definition about how the president decides when a prime minister is incapacitated.

Dookeran noted the the Muslimeen had shot Prime Minister A.N.R. Robinson in the Red House but acting President Emmanuel Carter was still not sure whether he should appoint someone to act.

Dookeran said Carter only did it on the basis of a letter from Robinson advising that Dookeran be appointed acting PM.

He said Robinson wrote the letter before the Muslimeen stormed the Parliament to cover his absence during a planned overseas trip.

Dookeran said he began discussions with the insurgents in the Red House after the insurgents shot Robinson and Attorney General Selwyn Richardson.

"My concern was not to come to an agreement, only to resolve the crisis in the chamber," he said. "I wanted peace," he added, making it clear that his view was that soldiers should storm the Red House only as a last resort.

Dookeran said when he suggested a mediator to help the Muslimeen suggested Rev Knolly Clarke. He also said he suggested that John Humphrey should be involved because “I felt he had a softer approach as opposed to a hard-line".

Dookeran made it clear that all along he was discussing an exit strategy to guarantee the safe passage of the hostages and he did not consider it an amnesty.

The Muslimeen freed him to negotiate an end to the crisis and were expecting him to return to the Parliament with the details of any agreement. However he said he was advised that he should not go.