Oct. 16--BRIDGETOWN, Barbados -- Barbados' Prime Minister, Owen Arthur, has dismissed the idea of giving the Sandals hotel chain substantial concessions to open a long-closed hotel here. 

Arthur was reacting to a report in a Barbados business newspaper quoting Sandals spokesman Allen Chastanet as saying that once Sandals was offered the same concessions cruise ships received from Caribbean governments it would move swiftly to open a hotel in anywhere. 

Chastenet made no reference to Barbados, where Sandals is yet to open the former Paradise Beach Resort acquired soon after closure in 1992. 

The Barbados government, trade union leaders and tourism promoters have over the years expressed concern about the continued closure of the hotel. 

Chastenet complained that in the Caribbean hotels were at a disadvantage with the international cruise liners, which were heavily subsidised by the governments. 

Chastenet said he once told an unnamed minister, "if you allow Sandals the same incentives you allow a cruise ship, (the company) is in here tomorrow." 

The Sandals spokesman, addressing regional journalists in Jamaica, painted a picture of cruise liners benefiting from grants and low-cost loans, paying employees minimum wages, importing into the Caribbean food from anywhere in the world and not paying duties on it, and having the state dispose of their garbage. 

Arthur said he found the statement "demeaning" and "offensive". 

"Sandals could not come to Barbados and get this kind of package," he said. "We are not going to be interested in having Sandals invest in Barbados at all, if the attitude, as set out in this newspaper article, is the real attitude of Sandals." 

Arthur said that his government had given Sandals some concessions for the Paradise Beach property, after the hotel chain headed by Jamaican magnate Gordon "Butch" Stewart had made an approach to it in 1994-95. 

"The package of incentives that we agreed to with Sandals was one that they conceived of and that we supported," he said. 

"Nothing that was put before us bore any relationship to the madness that is now being put to the public as the conditions under which Sandals would build hotels in countries where it doesn't now have a hotel." 

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(c) 2001, Caribbean News Agency. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.