The future of the allocation of funds for the Operation Bahamas, Turks and Caicos is set to be decided this week after a special review of the anti-drug smuggling initiative.<\/p>\n
Political, economic and public relations officer Greg Floyd at the US Embassy told The Tribune yesterday that a special team from Washington, DC, is expected to travel to the Bahamas later this week fo review OPBAT.<\/p>\n
Following this review, the team will present US government officials with a report that will determine the future of the prograrmme.<\/p>\n
“At this time it is not about the deduction of funds for OPBAT, but rather about the allocation, the distribution,” Mr Floyd said.<\/p>\n
US Ambassador John Rood last Friday returned from a two-week trip from Washington where he met with senior government officials to discuss the US’ continuing commitment to narcotics interdiction and OPBAT.<\/p>\n
On his return the ambassador announced that the talks had been “fruitful.”<\/p>\n
Mr Floyd said yesterday that Ambassador Rood was able to come to a “general agreement” with US government officials regarding the funding of OPBAT.<\/p>\n
He emphasised that there will be no reduction of the funds provided to the operation.<\/p>\n
In the weeks leading up to the ambassador’s trip, concerns were raised that the US might withdraw its Army helicopters from the programme and significantly reduce its financial support.<\/p>\n
However, the ambassador quickly moved to quell those fears by saying that there was no talk of removing the helicopters from OPBAT.<\/p>\n
The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was also a topic of discussion during the Washington trip.<\/p>\n
Although he could not yet disclose any details of the outcome of talks regarding the travel initiative, Mr Floyd said that the “news is good.”<\/p>\n
The initiative, which requires all US citizens travelling to the Bahamas to have a valid passport, has caused great concern for the country’s tourism industry.<\/p>\n
It was estimated that the Caribbean could lose billions of dollars in revenue if the deadline for the new initiative were to be enforced before US travellers – the majority of whom do not possess passports – had sufficient time to obtain the necessary documents.<\/p>\n
The Caribbean region was asking for a deadline on par with that set for Mexico and Canada – a January, 2008 deadline. After consideration of the region’s concerns, the US Department of Homeland Security decided to extend the original deadline for the Caribbean, a January, 2006 deadline, to 2007.<\/p>\n
Information regarding the possible additional extension of the deadline is expected to be released tomorrow.<\/p>\n
By KARIN HERIG Tribune Staff Reporter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Perhaps the United States realizes it is hard to fight the drug war with the Bahamas’ corrupt Defence Force and a Bahamian government that appears to endorse money laundering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}