Basseterre, St Kitts, March 17, 2019 – Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales will visit St Kitts and Nevis for a few hours this week, according to sources in Bridgetown and Castries.
It will be his first visit to St Kitts and Nevis in 45 years.
Prince Charles’ visit to St Kitts and Nevis in 1973 was at the special invitation of then Premier and now First National Hero, the Rt Excellent Sir Robert L Bradshaw, to officially open the Prince of Wales Bastion at the Brimstone Fortress National Park.
During the 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference (CHOGM) in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Prince Charles reminisced about that visit in 1973 as he sat next to then St. Kitts and Nevis’ Prime Minister the Right Hon. Dr Denzil L. Douglas during a State Dinner.
Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported that as they took their places for the meal, the Prince sat between the Pakistani Prime Minister Rajapaska and Prime Minister Douglas, at the time, the longest serving Head of Government in the 53 nation Commonwealth.
Later during dinner and in exchanging words with Prime Minister Douglas, Prince Charles recalled his visit to St. Kitts to officially open the Prince of Wales Bastion at the Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park as guest of Premier Bradshaw.
Prince Charles also recalled the services of former Governor General Sir Cuthbert Sebastian, who served as his personal physician during his Royal Visit in 1973.
Accompanied by the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Charles will this week visit four other Commonwealth countries during the 11-day tour, spending a day in each to meet local politicians, see the culture and undertake events about the environment.
It will also be the first time the Prince has been to Barbados, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada since 1973, and follows the 2018 confirmation that he will follow the Queen as the next head of Commonwealth.
In one area, he will be photographed looking at the same view he saw in 1973, demonstrating what has happened to the local flora and fauna since.
Other focuses will include youth opportunity, with the Prince’s Trust International now working in the Caribbean, and the preservation of local customs and heritage sites.
By the end of the tour, which will see the Prince and Duchess land in the UK on March 28, just in time for a scheduled Brexit, they will have visited eight Commonwealth countries since the Prince of Wales was confirmed as the organisation’s next head during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London 2018.
His visit to Cuba will be a first where he will spend four days. No serving British Prime Minister or member of the Royal Family has been there in an official capacity.
According to media reports, when the trip was announced, Republican US senator Rick Scott issued a letter protesting the decision, saying: “A trip of this magnitude by the Crown provides unwarranted legitimacy to a dictatorship with a decades-long history of persecuting and imprisoning its defectors and repressing its people.”
A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London has said: “Human rights is a subject that we discuss government-to-government with the Cubans. We’ve done so regularly over the years, and will continue to do so.”
The Queen is currently head of state in 16 of the 53 countries which make up the Commonwealth.