( L - R ) Spencer and Stanford

ST. JOHN'S (CMC):

Antigua and Barbuda's Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer has rejected an apology offered by Texan billionaire Allen Stanford over recent comments Stanford made about the country's leader.

"I ... totally reject that cunning attempt at an apology," Spencer told the nation in an address Friday night.

At the same time, he indicated that the special alliance between the government and the businessman had been broken and that the Stanford group would not be able to acquire any more government land for development.

"Like all other investors, local and foreign, Mr. Stanford's investment programmes will be facilitated under our broad investor alliance to be facilitated under the newly established Antigua and Barbuda Investment Authority, which gets its powers from the Cabinet of Antigua and Barbuda.

"Such facilitation of Mr. Stanford's investment agenda will be guided by government's policy decision that any of his investment projects involving further acquisition of lands owned by the state will be denied," the Prime Minister said.

Spencer was responding to Stanford's open letter to him, published in the form of an adver-tisement earlier this week.

In the letter, the Texan businessman said: "My only desire is to see Antigua and Barbuda be developed to its fullest potential. I recognise the need for cooperation to attain that goal and, in that spirit, apologise to those who may have deemed my actions offensive."

Stanford was apologising for his stinging rebuke of thePrime Minister after Spencer suggested he was meddling in the country's local politics by his criticism of the state of some of the country's communities.

But Spencer was not won over by the apology, saying he found no remorse or expression of sorrow or regret in the open letter.

"Apart from the heading where my name was included, I find nothing in that letter that speaks to the office of the Prime Minister, which he grossly disrespected," Spencer said.

Transparency

He continued: "I have to report to you that in the early hours of Tuesday morning, I received a telephone call from Mr. Stanford during which he outlined that his actions over the last two weeks were motivated by bad advice he had received from both sides of the political divide.

"My response to Mr. Stanford was that his words were all well and good, but that he had to put his case before the people of Antigua and Barbuda. I was very much surprised on Thursday morning to read in the papers an open letter to the Hon. Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer ..."

Spencer told the nation that the government is committed to working with legitimate investors but that transparency, accountability and good governance would be its watchwords.