He argued that this position of the phone company was not "blackmail" nor "acting in bad faith" as President Bharrat Jagdeo and Prime Minister Sam Hinds have asserted, but rather protecting its contractual monopoly rights and its shareholders both in Guyana and the United States.

"We have to use every means possible...(and) we are not embarrassed to say we are looking at protecting our interests. We have to defend our rights. We want to ensure fair competition and defend our rights negotiated in 1991," Prior stated at a news conference he hosted yesterday at GT&T headquarters in Georgetown.

Mr. Hinds last week said he is "astonished" that Prior would attempt to persuade the IDB against approving support for the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) project for Guyana. The ICT project is intended to benefit thousands of ordinary Guyanese and Mr. Hinds indicated that he was surprised because ATN was in an advanced stage of negotiations with the Government of Guyana for an "amicable settlement to end the company's monopoly over the telecommunication sector to introduce competition". (See page eight).

President Jagdeo also accused GT&T of trying to "blackmail" ordinary Guyanese people by protesting the Government's efforts to get a US$18M loan from the IDB approved. The loan is intended to be used to expand and modernise Guyana's Information Technology sector and approval has been held up because of protest by the phone company.

In a statement, the Prime Minister said he found it "utterly disbelieveable" that the ATN (Atlantic Telecommunications Network) Chairman would, in effect, "go behind the back of his own negotiating team to undermine the negotiations in an extraordinary display of bad faith by attempting to prevent IDB support for a vital telecommunications development which would bring Guyana into the 21st century and is a national priority of government".

The Government began negotiations with ATN on February 28 last "in good faith and on the explicit understanding that the representatives of both the Government and ATN/GT&T were fully authorised to discuss and settle the issues on the table, all of which were already public knowledge as a result of a Consultation Paper on the Reform of the Guyana Telecommunication Sector, which was widely circulated and publicly discussed in August/September 2001," Mr. Hinds said.

"We are not blackmailing the Government. We are still here to negotiate (and this) idea that we are not willing to negotiate is nonsense," Prior argued yesterday. He called for all the issues to be laid on the table and for these to be actively discussed between the phone company and the Guyana Government.

"We are interested in this (ITC) loan and this project (but) we are concerned that the Government wants to set up a new network for the Internet which will compete with GT&T," Prior said.

According to him, ATN has invested more than US$150M in Guyana so far, including the some 55,000 cell lines currently in use here and it is in this regard that GT&T is trying to protect its investments and shareholders from competition

"We are very anxious to negotiate a rate of settlement...and we are astounded that the Government is astounded," Prior said, adding that GT&T "can live with a monopoly or we can live without it".

"We are extremely concerned that the Government seems to be wanting this loan to set up a separate and competing network to GT&T. There is about US$5M out of this (US$18M) project that seems to be rather unclear but it seems to be towards building a new network for internet and we are saying why build a network? Why not use the network that is already there? Why not use the GT&T network?"

Prior also indicated that there is a lack of investor confidence in Guyana due to an unstable economic and political climate. This, however, contrasted with a statement by GT&T in a full page advertisement in this newspaper on Sunday in which the phone company stated: "We have faith in Guyana's future".

"We're willing to negotiate the introduction of competition notwithstanding the fact that our contractual rights is a monopoly...," Prior said. He noted that the two teams from the Government and GT&T met and had discussions in Trinidad where agreement was reached on some issues.

"We are trying to understand what is going on in the Government but it is surely not that we have failed to negotiate in good faith. It is surely not that we are hiding and it is surely not that we are blackmailing the Government."

Prior said it was obvious that the two teams came up with forms of agreements and "those negotiations stopped dead in their tracks when the negotiating team from Guyana came back home."

In response to a question, he said GT&T paid some US$5M to ATN as `advisory fees' for last year but was not sure of the figure over the past 10 years.

The Chronicle understands that the advisory fees, which are different to management fees, paid to ATN by GT&T since 1991 total some US$80M.