LONDON -- Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher today defended the U.S. invasion of Grenada and told a rowdy parliament session that Britain will abstain in the vote on a U.N. security council resolution condemning the United States.
Buckingham Palace, in a mushrooming furor over Grenada, said Queen Elizabeth II received no request for military help from the governor-general of the Caribbean island, an independent member of the British Commonwealth.
Mrs. Thatcher in the House of Commons also maintained that the British government had no residual constitutional responsibility for independent Grenada and the governor-general was free to act as he wished without checking with the British government.
Angry opposition leaders had claimed that if governor-general Sir Paul Scoon wanted military help, the request should have been sent to the queen as titular chief of state of the island.
Earlier, Labor foreign affairs spokesman Denis Healey said in an interview, 'I think the queen has made it clear she's immensely displeased by the attempt of President Reagan to use her representative as a cat's paw.'
The fresh controversy was sparked by Dominican Prime Minister Eugenia Charles' remarks to the security council that Scoon had asked the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States for military help.
Mrs. Thatcher said Britain had no knowledge of any request for military intervention by Scoon.
'That does not mean there was no request, it means we do not know of it,' she said.
As for support for the U.S. action, she said, 'The matter is being discussed in the United Nations and it is our intention to abstain on that resolution' condemning the invasion.
'I should be very glad if democracy were restored in Grenada,' she said.
Pressed by opposition questioners on British relations with the United States after Grenada, Mrs. Thatcher said, 'There are very much larger issues at stake between the United States and the United Kingdom and indeed the whole future of the freedom of Europe and the whole future of NATO.
'We stand by the United States and will continue to do so in the larger alliances. The United States is the final guarantor of freedom in Europe,' she said.
Mrs. Thatcher said Britain would consider any request from Commonwealth Secretary General Shridath Ramphal for British troops in a Commonwealth peace-keeping force for Grenada.
Healey had said he did not believe Scoon, who was appointed by the queen, 'could conceivably have acted in this way that is so unconstitutional and improper.'
'I think the U.S. has been manipulating the Carribbean leaders to which it has access,' he said.
The palace declined to comment immediately on the assertion that the Queen was displeased by any of Reagan's actions, but Mrs. Thatcher conferred with the queen for 90 minutes Wednesday evening amid indications the queen was concerned about the situation.
The U.S.-led invasion, besides being a severe political embarrassment for the British government, threw up a welter of constitutional riddles. Government sources seemed at a loss to define precisely what the queen and the government could or should do next.
Theoretically, Grenada's rebel leaders could appeal to the queen for help against the invaders but committed Marxists would be highly unlikely to adopt such a move, political observers said.
Reports from Washington suggest Scoon might be instructed to form or head an interim government to pave the way for democratic elections. Such a move might prompt charges that the queen's representative was a stooge of Washington, however.
Highlighting another aspect of the sovereignty issue, a backbench Conservative politician wrote in The Times today that the U.S.-led invasion of Grenada was no different from Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands.
That situation led to war between Britain and Argentina, but the worst outcome of the present crisis seemed to be a severe tongue-lashing for Mrs. Thatcher in an emergency debate in Parliament.
'You have been an obedient poodle to the American president,' said Denis Healey, Labor foreign affairs spokesman. Accusations of 'lack of grit' 'fecklessness' and 'flaccid indolence' rolled from the verbal pugilist.
The Conservative response was muted. American consultation with Britain over the Grenada invasion was 'regrettably less than we could have wished,' said Sir Geoffrey Howe, the foreign secretary.
