Major and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd is an indication of the major decisions facing Bermuda. Sir John wants to put the American bases in Bermuda on the "front burner'' because they are now Bermuda's major issue of the 1990s.

This newspaper thinks that the United States will withdraw from the Bermuda bases sooner rather than later. We think that simply because it must be difficult for anyone to believe that American public figures will keep non-strategic bases open overseas while incurring political wrath by closing bases at home. Clearly Bermuda has to keep the airstrip open for commercial airliner use with or without co-operation from the United States. If Bermuda has, in the end, to go it alone and run the airfield with traffic control, fire and crash services and runway maintenance, it will be enormously expensive and a burden on Bermudian taxpayers. It goes without saying that, as a tourist resort, Bermuda is more reliant on good air service than most places.

It is clear to us that Sir John Swan's Government is trying to get the best deal it can which will keep the runways open at the lowest cost to Bermuda.

Ideally, Bermuda's Government would like the United States to continue to provide us with the free service we have enjoyed for commercial aircraft since the end of the Second World War. We think that is unlikely to happen.

It is clear that, with the help of the United Kingdom Government, Sir John Swan hopes to convince the United States Government that Kindley Field has Atlantic Ocean value other than its most recent outdated use of searching for Soviet submarines. Doubtless, Sir John Swan will impress upon the United Kingdom Government that, aside from its usefulness to the United States as a bad weather emergency field for the East Coast, Kindley Field has value to the United Kingdom as a landing area for its protective mission in Belize, to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as a convenient air staging field, and is useful to any number of governments for search and rescue.

The reality for Bermudians is that the bases are valuable to Bermuda in terms of commercial air flights and also in terms of cash spent locally by base personnel. Bermudians have had a tendency to take the bases for granted, right down to the Progressive Labour Party's suggestion in recent years that Bermuda should charge the US rent for supplying us with a free airfield.

Sir John Swan is trying to get the best bases deal he can for Bermuda. Make no mistake, the trips Sir John is taking to Washington and to London are of enormous importance to Bermuda's economy and of tremendous significance to Bermuda's future.

It is a great credit to Sir John Swan as Premier of Bermuda that he has cultivated close relationships with the leaders of the Western World. All sorts of pressures on large countries influence decisions. Those decisions do not have to and do not always take into consideration tiny places like Bermuda. It is a great credit to Sir John Swan that he can take Bermuda's problems straight to the top and get a hearing. We think Bermuda may be the only tiny island in the world with that kind of access to leaders ranging from Prime Minister John Major to General Colin Powell.