Premier Alex Scott is likely to have difficulty convincing the United Kingdom Government that disposal of asbestos at the former Baselands is its responsibility and not Bermuda's.

Last week Mr. Scott told The Royal Gazette that "it is arguably a British/American responsibility... A vast amount of the asbestos on our shores is a product of the US-UK Bases Agreement and if it is felt between them that they can find a resolution to it, so be it".

Mr. Scott may well make that argument, but it will not hold any water with the US and won't hold much more with the UK.

That's because Bermuda is already in receipt of $11 million from the United States that finalised the handover of the Bases. The primary issue holding up resolution of the issue was environmental remediation, including asbestos disposal.

The UK, which was asked to take over the negotiations when the Progressive Labour Party came to power, eventually decided that and Bermuda was not going to get a better deal than the $11 million the US was offering for the replacement of Longbird Bridge.

If Mr. Scott, who was then the Works Minister, or any other Cabinet Ministers at the time were unhappy with the terms of the deal, they should have said so then.

It does not matter if the UK was a signatory to the original agreement or not; that agreement ended once Bermuda accepted the deal.

From that moment on, all subsequent problems were left for Bermuda to solve and the UK made it quite clear that it would not be funding any remediation - although it was happy to provide advice.

Why Mr. Scott should feel that the UK will now change its mind is a mystery.

The deal that the PLP Government made with the US was not great, even if it was the best that could be achieved and there is absolutely no point in thinking that history can now be rewritten to make the UK to take on the responsibility.

Mr. Scott should not waste any time on the subject and should instead devote his Government's time to finding the best possible way of disposing of the growing mountain of asbestos at Southside and the Government Quarry.

It may be that Mr. Scott is not thinking about asbestos at all in making his comments. Instead, this may be the beginning of efforts to build a case for Independence.

Last Thursday he said the UK Government had agreed to conduct a review of the asbestos problem, said he will meet with Overseas Territories Minister Bill Rammell and hoped to also meet with Prime Minister Tony Blair, and said he had a sense, from "various correspondence" that the British Government were moving towards tightening the colonial relationship with the Overseas Territories.

There was no elaboration on the nature or context of the correspondence.

Instead, the community is left with the idea that first, the UK should be taking more responsibility for asbestos disposal (it won't and should not) and, second, that the UK plans to tighten its colonial relationship with Bermuda in an undisclosed way.

As the British Labour Party Conference will show this week, the UK Government has far too many problems on its hands to be concerned with tightening its grip on Bermuda.

But somewhere down the road, that won't stop Mr. Scott and others from coming back to the issues, as part of the case for Bermuda seeking sovereignty.