This newspaper understands that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday last dismissed the ATN complaint in a suit relating to issues involving the exclusivity of, and the rate of return on, its contract with the Guyana Government and the jurisdiction of the United States courts with respect to hearing such claims.

The Chronicle also understands that the U.S. Virgin Islands-based ATN, which owns 80 per cent of the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company Ltd. (GT&T) is considering an appeal of this decision and has a 30-day period in which to make such an appeal.

Contacted yesterday, Prime Minister Sam Hinds said this development means that "there are no legal impediments for the loan not to be proceeded with at this point in time, except that ATN still has some time to file an appeal."

The Prime Minister also anticipated that the loan will now be proceeded with and come into effect which will enable the expansion and modernisation of Guyana's Information technology sector, known as the ICT project.

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".

President Bharrat Jagdeo had also, during the height of the controversy last year, accused GT&T of trying to 'blackmail' ordinary Guyanese people by protesting the Government's efforts to get the 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 was held up because of the protest by the phone company.

Mr. Hinds yesterday told this newspaper that the ruling last week indicated that the courts in the U.S. have no jurisdiction to make a ruling on the matter since, basically, the courts in Guyana have more jurisdiction on the matter, and as such it was decided by the U.S District court that the case would have to be brought to the courts of Guyana.

During the height of the controversy around June last year, Head of the Presidential Secretariat and Cabinet Secretary, Dr. Roger Luncheon said the resort by ATN to the boardroom of the IDB and to the courtroom "to thwart Guyana's national development is inexcusable and must be rejected".

According to Luncheon, "GT&T/ATN's attempt to hold to ransom the development of Guyana, the aspirations of its young people and the welfare of the citizens is impossible to accept".

GT&T, through ATN, persuaded the IDB against approving support for the very important Information and Communications Technology (ICT) project for Guyana, and which the Government had lobbied for vigorously.

"Guyana will join the rest of the world in harnessing the technology unhindered by the actions of GT&T/ATN," Luncheon had told one of his regular post-Cabinet news conference in June last year.

"In whatever develops, the administration is quite clear that it is the interest of the Guyanese people and the Guyanese nation that remains uppermost," he said.

He also pointed out that the ICT project "clearly understood and was crafted with an expectation that the (GT&T) monopoly would not continue in place".

Chairman of ATN, Mr. Cornelius Prior, at a news conference at GT&T's office in Brickdam, Georgetown on June 24, 2002, sought to vigorously defend the phone company's controversial position of trying to block the IDB loan here.

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