(Go-Jamaica) The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) hierarchy has revealed that Prime Minister Bruce Golding has offered to resign over the controversial Manatt, Phelps and Phillips issue.

But the JLP chairman Dr Ken Baugh says the party is not accepting Mr Golding’s offer to resign.

Dr Baugh made the revelation at a press conference in Ocho Rios, St Ann, yesterday afternoon during a break from a JLP Central Executive meeting.

Since Friday, the Prime Minister has been engaged in a series of talks with various JLP groups as calls mount for his resignation.

At the press conference yesterday Dr Baugh revealed that throughout the consultations, the Prime Minister has maintained that he would step down. According to Dr Baugh, although the Prime Minister does not want to resign, Mr Golding believes it is the appropriate thing to do.

But Dr Baugh says the JLP will not accept Golding’s offer to resign because it does not believe the Prime Minister has done anything wrong in the Manatt matter.

There has been increasing pressure for the Prime Minister to step aside since he told Parliament on Tuesday that he had sanctioned the initiative for persons within his party to lobby the United States against the extradition request for Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke.

Coke is wanted on gun and drug charges.

The Prime Minister’s admission came less than a month after he told the Parliament that the Government had not engaged any firm in the Dudus extradition matter.

Since making the admission last week, Mr Golding has been insisting that the engagement of Manatt was a party initiative and not a Government idea.

He has also said the more than US$49,000 paid to Manatt was provided by contributors to the JLP and not Coke.