Trinidad Crisis Persists After Talks Collapse

An end to Trinidad’s hostage crisis drew tantalizingly close Monday, but negotiations collapsed at the 11th hour as renewed gunfire was heard at the Parliament building, where the prime minister of this twin-island nation and about 45 other people are being held captive.

Government officials had called an evening news conference to announce the imminent release of the hostages and freedom for their black Muslim captors, but as the conference began an embarrassed official declared: “We came here expecting to give you word of an agreement, but as of now we cannot.”

“We’re back to square one,” conceded Maj. Dave Williams, a spokesman for the Trinidad and Tobago Defense Force.

As Williams spoke, there was a prolonged burst of gunfire from the vicinity of Red House, the Parliament building where wounded Prime Minister A. N. R. Robinson has been held by rebellious Muslims since Friday evening. Also being held are Cabinet ministers, members of Parliament and others.

Later, some wire services reported that Robinson and the chief negotiator for the Muslim extremists said they had reached agreement to end the standoff. But Williams denied that an agreement was reached.

The gunfight broke out after negotiations already had become snagged over a demand by rebels in Red House to take their loaded weapons with them into officially approved sanctuary at their nine-acre religious enclave in Mucurapo, north of Port of Spain, Williams said.

In a confused series of announcements, government spokesmen Monday first estimated the number of hostages at up to 100, then scaled the number back to 60 to 80, and finally, late Monday, issued what they called a “firm figure” of 41.

The government’s chief information officer, Gregory Shaw, said there are 25 hostages in the television building and 16 at Red House. The Red House hostages number eight government ministers, including Robinson, six other members of Parliament, the former ambassador to London and a top civil servant.

As for hostage takers, Williams said they are believed to number about 45 in Red House and 75 in the television complex, where a prolonged gun battle involving rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and automatic weapons erupted at mid-morning Monday.

The morning clash occurred when some of the hostage takers attempted to shoot their way out of the television annex building and were driven back inside by troops who have surrounded both hostage sites, Williams said.

He had no explanation of the renewed gunfire around Red House, which occurred shortly before the beginning of a 6 p.m.-to-noon curfew Monday night. But the occurrence of two armed clashes at a time when the government felt it was making progress in negotiations for the release of the hostages suggested a pessimistic outlook, at least in the short term.

Also, it remained uncertain whether negotiations with the rebels, which began Saturday, were still in progress Monday night. Government spokesman Shaw, said only that “up to this time (7 p.m. Monday local time), the government has not agreed to demands of the group that have been holding the prime minister and his colleagues and other persons at gunpoint since they burst into Parliament Friday evening.”

Shaw stressed several times that “intensive efforts are continuing to ensure the safety” of the hostages. He declined to elaborate.

Williams said that Knolly Clarke, an Anglican clergyman who talked to Robinson by telephone Monday, reported that the prime minister told him he would be the last to leave Red House, only after all the other hostages were safe.

Williams also said Robinson had been shot in both feet but was reported in stable condition and under treatment by Dr. Emmanuel Hosein, the health minister and a fellow hostage.

Although some pillaging of stores and shopping centers continued Monday, Port of Spain and its environs appeared calm. Officials clamped a 24-hour curfew on the capital’s center, where the hostage sites are located, and a 6 p.m.-to-noon curfew on the rest of the city.

Broadcasts from the one radio station still operating stressed that “security personnel have shoot-on-sight instructions” for dealing with looters, who already have plundered an estimated $50 million worth of goods.

The total number of casualties remained uncertain, but a local newspaper, the Express, said city hospitals reported 314 persons treated for injuries. A total of 169 required surgery, it said.

Williams minimized casualties in the Defense Force, saying only that three soldiers had been hit, none seriously, by gunfire. He said he believed six of the hostage takers, all members of the Jamaat al Muslimeen black Muslim group, had been killed. Unofficial estimates of the number dead in Port of Spain ran as high as 100.

The black Muslim group, long a focus of concern to the government because of what it perceived as the organization’s tendency toward violence, is itself showing signs of schism, Shaw and Williams said.

Williams cited the attempted breakout at the television complex at a time when the Red House hostage takers appeared to be in agreement with the government as evidence of what he called “some degree of splintering in the ranks of the hostage takers.”

Later, the Red House group appeared to have broken ranks with the television group when they began demanding the right to keep their arms--the demand that caused the hoped-for agreement to collapse.

Under the agreement, as outlined by the government spokesman, the television complex and Red House captors would be granted amnesty and be allowed to return in stages to their Islamic religious commune, itself a source of longstanding conflict with the government.

Williams said the first step would be release of the television hostages, who would be taken to the Trinidadian army’s Camp Ogden for physical and psychiatric examination. Their captors would then be freed to return unarmed to their commune. Next, the hostages in Red House would be released in the same fashion and their captors freed to go back to the Muslim enclave in Mucurapo.

Asked if the failed agreement included any conditions requiring the resignation of Robinson and appointment of an interim government including Muslim leader Yasin abu Bakr, the spokesmen said they were “not aware of any such condition being on the table.”

In the absence of a clear account of events from the government or local news outlets, rumors abounded. Among them was a report that a battalion of troops from the Jamaica Defense Force had been flown in from Kingston to assist local forces in policing the capital, as well as a rumor that some American troops had landed.

Both were denied by Col. Ralph Brown, commander of the Trinidad and Tobago Defense Force. “We’ve got things under control, and we don’t need any help,” he said.

The rebel leader, Bakr, has been the center of controversy since 1985, when he founded the black Muslim group on the premise that “the nation was corrupt in the hands of evil men,” said the Express newspaper.

Following a stint in jail for contempt of court, Bakr went to Libya and formed close ties to that country’s radical leader, Col. Moammar Kadafi. Following his return to the islands, Bakr was arrested after a police raid uncovered an arms cache at the Muslim commune.

The controversy flared again last year when the government charged that his group was occupying the commune illegally and sent a crew to demolish some buildings there. Last week, just three days before he led the hostage-taking raid on the television complex and Parliament building, Bakr lost a high-court test to claim rights to the land.

In Washington, White House and State Department spokesmen both emphasized that the estimated 6,000 American citizens in Trinidad and Tobago, most of them tourists, appeared to be in no immediate danger. However, the U.S. Embassy issued an advisory suggesting that Americans on the island remain indoors.

Violence in the country appears to be restricted to the capital, White House Deputy Press Secretary Steve Hart noted.

Officials refused to comment on reports that American naval vessels were in the vicinity of the islands, although the Navy routinely keeps several ships in a large naval training area nearby.

Administration officials noted the ties between Libya and the group holding the hostages, but added that no evidence exists of Libyan involvement in the current attack.

Times staff writer David Lauter, in Washington, contributed to this story.

BACKGROUND

Nearly 400,000 Muslims make the Caribbean their home. But most are East Indians who disdain the radical politics of black Muslims such as those holding Trinidad’s government hostage. Many East Indians consider black Muslims to be political opportunists, inspired more by the black power movement than by traditional Islam. Stokely Carmichael, the black power advocate of the 1960s in the United States, was born in Trinidad. Prominent Muslims among the region’s political leaders include President Noor Hassanali of Trinidad and Prime Minister Hamilton Green of Guyana. The first Muslims came to the region to work in the sugar cane fields in the 1700s. Now, domed mosques can be found on a dozen Caribbean islands.