ST JOHN’S, Antigua (AP) — Antiguan Prime Minister Lester Bird yesterday withdrew a legal request to prevent the circulation of a videotape on which a teenage girl accuses him of having sex with her.

Bird’s attorneys said they thought the injunction request would have delayed the trial date for Bird’s defamation lawsuit against the girl, a media group, the two journalists who interviewed the girl and opposition leaders who broadcast the videotape at a public meeting.

Justice Ian Mitchell, however, set the trial date yesterday for the defamation case on December 9. He also awarded legal costs of Eastern Caribbean $26,000 (US$10,000) to the defendants, who appeared in court several times before Bird’s attorneys decided to drop the injunction request.

It was “better if the matter to go to trial as quickly as possible so as to avoid a multiplicity of hearings and so as to ensure a speedy and final vindication of his (Bird’s) name,” said John Fuller, one of three attorneys representing the leader of Antigua and Barbuda.

The interview with the girl was taped last year by two journalists of the Observer media group, one of the Caribbean country’s largest and one that Bird says is overly critical of his government.

The video has not been broadcast on television, but copies of the tape have been circulating in the country.

The girl claimed she met Bird and his brother, Ivor Bird, at a party in 1999 when she was 12, and had a sexual relationship first with Ivor and then with Bird. She also alleged she made payments for cocaine deals on behalf of Bird, his brother, and Chief of Staff Asot Michael.

Bird denies he ever met her and denies any involvement in drugs.

The whereabouts of the girl — who said she was born in Suriname on May 15, 1987, and carries a Guyanese passport — was unclear.