He also denied rumours that a security issue at Nassau International Airport recently had caused friction between the embassy and the Bahamas government. <\/P><\/p>\n
Other sections of the press had reported that a “terrorist suspect” had been allowed to board a plane for Miami against the wishes of the US pre-clearance authorities, who were prevented from taking him into custody.. <\/P><\/p>\n
Although admitting that an individual at the airport had been “of interest” to US authorities, he said there were “factual errors” in the reports of a security breach. <\/P><\/p>\n
“There are certainly no plans to do anything with pre-clearance here. There is no serious consideration of this issue in Washington or anywhere else, although I am sure there are options for almost anything,” he told the Guardian. <\/P><\/p>\n
He added that Congress might take a different view if there was another 9\/11 and some of the attackers came through a pre-clearance facility, but the Embassy was working closely with the government to improve security at both air and sea ports. <\/P><\/p>\n
“Pre-clearance is actually beneficial to us because it reduces the post-clearance load on our Customs and Immigration facilities. We consider it a cost-effective process,” Mr Witajewski said. <\/P><\/p>\n
He also spiked rumours that the recent travel advisory related to Hurricane Isabel was intended as a warning to Bahamian officials, or was an overreaction on the part of United States authorities. <\/P><\/p>\n
“These advisories are automatically generated under certain conditions to protect our facilities and personnel. There were absolutely no ulterior motives or hidden agendas to the warning. It was simply a prudent measure for us,” he said. <\/P><\/p>\n
The pre-clearance facilities at Nassau and Freeport international Airports were closed a week ago Sunday because of the threat from Hurricane Isabel, a category 5 storm that was bearing down on the Bahamas but eventually turned northward. <\/P><\/p>\n
Facilities re-opened three days later. The embassy said that only a small number of people were “temporarily inconvenienced” by the closing.. According to the embassy’s web site, 33 US inspectors pre-clear over 1.5 million passengers a year in the Bahamas. Only a handful of countries, including Canada and Bermuda, enjoy this facility. <\/P><\/p>\n
By Larry Smith, The Nassau Guardian<\/B><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reports that the US is threatening to end pre-clearance privileges for the Bahamas were denied Monday by the deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy here, Robert Witajewski.<\/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":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244053","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=244053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}