By Clint Chan Tack, Newsday TT

OPPOSITION LEADER Basdeo Panday yesterday rejected charges by Planning and Development Minister Camille Robinson-Regis that the UNC "was on a concerted path to try and destabilise the country." Robinson-Regis made the charge during Friday's sitting of the House of Representatives when she referred to a report from a Canadian newspaper which contained statements from Chaguanas MP Manohar Ramsaran about thousands of Indo-Trinidadians signing petitions asking the Canadian, US and British Embassies to grant them sanctuary based on racially-targetted kidnappings. In the same report, Ramsaran claimed 3,000 nationals applied for refuge in Canada. Canadian High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago, Simon Wade, and senior US Embassy officials stated there was no truth to Ramsaran's claims.

Panday told Newsday that he has no information which remotely suggests that the UNC is trying to tarnish the country's international reputation. The UNC leader said as far as he was aware, the Canadian journalist interviewed certain persons, they expressed their views and this was normal in the practice of journalism. "The lady held interviews," he stated. The report forms a small fraction of a 17-page article entitled "TT's Kingmaker: Gauging the threat: How Jamaat is viewed in Trinidad" and TT High Commissioner to Canada, Arnold Piggott, has written to the editor of the Canadian newspaper about the contents of the report. Panday was overseas at the time of the article's publication and only passing reference is made to him within the article.

The UNC will hold a people's forum tonight at the Endeavour Hindu School at 7.30 pm and Panday will deliver the feature address at that meeting, his first for 2004. On his attendance at last month's Indian Diaspora Conference in New Delhi, Panday said the highlight for him was the fact that the Diaspora encompasses 22 million people worldwide with a collective, annual earning capacity of US$ 200 billion. He added that in the wake of the conference, people worldwide (including the Caribbean) will have a greater awareness about "the tremendous opportunity for developing that resource."