Premier Alex Scott this week expressed confidence that Bermuda's asbestos garbage would not be simply dumped on another country to become someone else's potential health problem.

Speaking at a press conference Thursday, the Premier said that the British Government had agreed to conduct a review of asbestos on the Island and would make recommendations on solving the problem. Government is keen to avoid any legal liability should asbestos shipped overseas cause problems elsewhere.

The Opposition United Bermuda Party (UBP) is questioning whether Bermuda can avoid any liability for waste left here by the United States, saying that the first Progressive Labour Party (PLP) government had effectively accepted responsibility when the former baselands were handed over to Bermuda last year.

"It is arguably a British/American responsibility," Mr. Scott told The Royal Gazette after Thursday's press conference. "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."

International law generally frowns on the movement of hazardous waste between countries, especially when that waste is being shipped from a developed nation to a developing one.

Asked whether Bermuda had a moral, if not legal, responsibility to ensure that the cancer causing substance would not become a risk to a vulnerable population in a developing country, Mr. Scott said environmental protection laws should ensure that doesn't happen.

"There are now global protections for asbestos dumping," he said. "That's why Bermuda has kept it for so long - because of the protections."

He said that some countries are in the business of accepting asbestos and feel they can manage it safely. "They have the science that satisfies themselves they can do so," he continued. "This is a vexing issue for us. It's something we have joint responsibility for. Britain is still responsible for Bermuda and some will argue that as a colony we can look to the UK for assistance and we are doing so."

Most of the Island's asbestos waste was inherited from the United States which handed over its former baselands here in March last year without agreeing to clean up any toxic waste.

The former UBP government had been dealing directly with the United States Government and was working to get the US Navy to ship their asbestos off the Island as their own waste.

They failed to conclude an agreement and, in a marked change of strategy, the first PLP Government decided to have the United Kingdom Government negotiate with the United States.

"Under the terms of that agreement, the termination absolves the US and the UK of any further liability," insisted UBP Leader Grant Gibbons yesterday. "That's a problem the current Government is going to have to deal with - when the bases deal was signed they accepted liability for the waste that was left here.

"So the problem now becomes a Bermuda taxpayer problem."

Asked how a UBP Government would solve the problem, he said: "We would probably look to methods that would allow us to convert the stuff into inert material onsite.

"If you ship it somewhere else, there obviously is a moral issue in terms of making our problem someone else's problem."

Asbestos was contained on 70 percent of the 2.5 million square feet of former US baseland buildings, according to a 1995 Government report, with 25 percent containing `friable asbestos' in a damaged state.

Some 80,000 linear feet of asbestos water piping and 60 manholes full of asbestos insulation were dotted around the sites.

The American asbestos is stored in dozens of containers - many of them rusting - in St. Davids, but some buildings on the former baselands in St. David's and Morgan's Point still contain asbestos. And asbestos generated domestically is stored in containers at a Government quarry near Bailey's Bay.

When in Government, the UBP wanted to mix the substance in concrete and drop it in the ocean - asbestos has to be airborne for it to be harmful and, besides, an artificial reef habitat for fish could be created, it was felt.

That solution attracted the attention of environmental protection group Greenpeace and was not pursued when the PLP came into power.

"We're not going to dump it in the sea," said then Works and Engineering Minister Mr. Scott in October 2001. "That's not the image Bermuda wants - as polluter of the sea."

At the time he was speaking about domestically generated asbestos - the bases hand-over was still being negotiated - and he revealed that negotiations were on to have another country accept the waste without incurring any legal liabilities for Bermuda.

Asbestos has been linked to some forms of cancer in humans and its use for new developments is banned both here and in the United States.

Cleaning up all the toxic waste left by the Americans was expected to cost about $60 million, according to a 1997 US Navy report. Of that amount $33 million was for asbestos removal. In July last year Baroness Amos, the junior Minister for Britain's colonies told The Royal Gazette that Britain will provide "technical assistance" but will not be paying for the clean up.