“We requested it to enhance and ensure the safety of America’s closest neighbor,” Christie told Reuters, citing terrorism as a major threat to the country. <\/P><\/p>\n
The prime minister expressed his concerns while having breakfast with the U.S. president in New York. <\/P><\/p>\n
Christie said the request was for a base in Great Inagua, the southern tip of the archipelago of islands southeast of Florida. The Bahamas is a former British colony with a population of about 300,000. <\/P><\/p>\n
“When a plane takes off from Miami, it is over the Bahamian territory within 10 minutes,” he said. The country also needs a military base to prevent the influx of Haitian immigrants and illegal drug-trafficking, he said. <\/P><\/p>\n
There was no immediate comment from the White House. <\/P><\/p>\n
The Bahamas relies heavily on the United States for tourism, which brings in 70 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Eight-five percent of foreign visitors to the islands are from the United States. <\/P><\/p>\n
Reuters<\/B><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Bahamas asked U.S. President Bush Wednesday to establish a military outpost on the chain of islands to give it greater protection, Bahamian Prime Minister Perry Christie said.<\/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-244066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244066","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=244066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}