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The An­tigua and Bar­bu­da De­fence Force (ABDF) is deny­ing re­ports of unau­tho­rised Amer­i­can mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty on the is­land, say­ing that the pres­ence of Cana­di­an mil­i­tary of­fi­cials is a re­sult of the plan­ning process for the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) to be held here next year.

In a state­ment, the ABDF said that there has been “no con­fir­ma­tion or au­tho­ri­sa­tion of Amer­i­can sol­diers con­duct­ing sur­veys or op­er­a­tions with­in the city of St. John’s or any oth­er part of the is­land.

“The Cana­di­an mil­i­tary per­son­nel cur­rent­ly on is­land are present as part of on­go­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive plan­ning and prepara­to­ry ex­er­cis­es in sup­port of the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing CHOGM 2026,” the ABDF said, adding that the part­ner­ship be­tween the two coun­tries forms part of a broad­er frame­work of co­op­er­a­tion aimed at strength­en­ing lo­cal readi­ness, co­or­di­na­tion, and se­cu­ri­ty plan­ning in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the high-pro­file in­ter­na­tion­al event.