Tourism Minister David Allen and key officials hunkered down in a meeting last night to figure out what to do about "misleading and blatantly false" information published on the Internet by Tourism critic Tony Brannon.

Mr. Brannon's latest missive circulating the Internet alleges that Carnival Cruises has been "chased out of Bermuda" by unreasonable demands made by the Minister during negotiations over increasing the company's business with Bermuda.

Citing "very good inside authority," Mr. Brannon says that at a recent meeting with the president of Carnival Cruises, Mr. Allen laid down conditions for the cruise line to add another five calls to Bermuda.

According to Mr. Brannon, among the Minister's demands were that the cruise line pay a $200,000 marketing fee per trip.

"This basically concluded the meeting as the Carnival executive headed for his Lear Jet within five minutes of this request."

Mr. Brannon also alleged that the Minister wanted to require the cruise line to play videos of Bermuda on all its ships worldwide.

Acting director of tourism Judith Hall-Bean would not disclose what was discussed between the minister and Carnival Cruises, saying the negotiations are ongoing.

But she was not happy with the content of the Internet story.

"We're very concerned - a lot of things are basically misleading," she said. "At least four of his statements are incorrect. Whatever his source is, they have given him incorrect, misleading and blatantly false information and we are not happy."

Mrs. Hall-Bean said the department had already been contacted by an overseas magazine on the matter."It's just not on - at least he could have called us and asked us about it," she said.

Last night Bermuda Broadcasting reported on its nightly news broadcast that Carnival Cruise executives were still looking forward to doing business with Bermuda, including providing a dedicated ship to the West End, although there had been " a few hiccups" with the negotiations.

Mrs. Hall-Bean said, when asked, that the department was still discussing "what kind of action we're going to take" in response to Mr. Brannon's allegations.

"The impact really is quite serious - this is not the first time Tony Brannon has done something like this."