Spice Island Power Play

By Bernard Diederich

After a bloody takeover, a U.S. force steams into range

For almost a week, Radio Free Grenada had kept listeners across the Caribbean on edge with breathless accounts of coups and countercoups among the Marxist rulers of the tiny (133 sq. mi., pop. 110,000) island. Then last Wednesday, what had begun as political melodrama turned into a murderous power play.

Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, 39, was languishing under army-imposed house arrest in the capital of St. George's when a mob of supporters burst past the guards and carried him outdoors. To shouts of "We get we leader back," Bishop joined a crowd of 10,000 that surged through the city streets protesting his overthrow.

Suddenly, say eyewitnesses, truckloads of soldiers roared up and fired on the crowd, slaying more than a dozen people. In the resulting pandemonium, Bishop was led away at gunpoint. That night Radio Free Grenada announced the chilling news that he was dead. He had been executed along with five other officials by the "revolutionary armed forces" under the command of General Hudson Austin.

As word of the bloody takeover reached Washington, a naval task force that had been headed for Lebanon with 1,900 Marines aboard was ordered to change course and steam toward Grenada. Its new mission, said Pentagon officials, was to offer protection if necessary for the 1,000 Americans on the island, the majority of them students at the St. George's University School of Medicine. The situation, declared White House Spokesman Larry Speakes, "has raised our concerns to the highest level." Equally perturbed were the governments of the dozen Caribbean island nations that share Grenada's British heritage. At Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, the leaders of those countries met to consider sanctions, against Grenada's new junta.

Bishop seized power 4 1/2 years ago in a bloodless coup that deposed the eccentric and repressive regime of Sir Eric Gairy. Nominally a Marxist but at heart a pragmatist, Bishop did not establish a democracy. But he did satisfy most citizens with social tranquillity, rising exports and a host of public works, including 45 miles of new roads. Many of the projects were financed by Cuban and other Soviet bloc aid. Lately Bishop had even been talking of elections. Last spring he visited Washington for meetings with U.S. officials in an effort to tone down the antagonistic rhetoric between the two governments, much of it spawned by construction of a Cuban-built runway capable of accommodating MiG fighters.

Bishop's moderation may have been his undoing. For months, Grenada had been rife with rumors of conflict between the Prime Minister and his most senior colleague, Finance Minister Bernard Coard, a doctrinaire Marxist. After a welter of contradictory reports last week, it seemed that Coard had toppled Bishop in a power struggle. General Austin strengthened that impression in a long radio address in which he chastised Bishop for failing to share power with Coard under a policy of "collective leadership."

In fact, it now appears that Coard was soon eclipsed by military leaders, who detained and later killed Bishop. They also executed Foreign Minister Unison

Whiteman, Education Minister JacqueWhiteman, Education Minister Jacqueline Creft, Housing Minister Norris Bain and two union leaders allied with the slain Prime Minister. Coard, meanwhile, has mysteriously vanished from sight.

Apparently the officers who run the island's 2,000-man army were fearful of Bishop's popular appeal and his dominance over the ruling New Jewel Movement party. In his place they established a 16-member ruling "Revolutionary Military Council" composed entirely of army officers. Its first decrees banned demonstrations, closed schools and all but essential businesses indefinitely, and imposed a four-day 24-hour curfew. Violators, Austin warned, "will be shot on sight."

Grenada's chances of prospering under the junta's control are slim. Austin, 45, is a one-time prison guard with few visible qualifications to head a government. His sole academic credential is a correspondence degree in construction engineering. Though little was known of Austin's political connections, the Reagan Administration was fearful that last week's coup had been inspired by Cuba or the Soviet Union. Grenada lies at the heart of vital sea-lanes, and Administration officials have long claimed that the Soviets plan to turn the is land into a strategic base that would threat en the shipment of U.S. oil supplies. In recent months, however, the Cubans have been urging the Grenadian government to seek accommodation with the U.S. to help ease tensions in the region. Last week they seemed concerned that the latest events in Grenada might give Communism a bad name in the Caribbean. Cuban President Fidel Castro condemned the "savage" killings and said that no revolutionary doctrine or principle justified "the physical elimination of Maurice Bishop and the outstanding group of honest and worthy leaders who died."

For Grenada's other neighbors in the crescent of Caribbean island nations, the coup was particularly bad news. Afflicted though many of them are with depressed economies, until now their citizens have been spared violent Latin American-style takeovers. At their meeting in Trini dad, the foreign ministers and heads of state of CARICOM, the organization of Caribbean nations, pondered the crisis in Grenada but understood full well they could not undo the damage.

Said Barbados Prime Minister Tom Adams: "The worst has been realized. The most vicious type of political murder has come into what was once a happy chain of islands."

--By Kenneth W. Santa. Reported by Bernard Diederich/Bridgetown This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.