12616: OAS Breaks Off Consideration of Haitian Resolution (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Stanley  Lucas <slucas@iri.org>

OAS Breaks Off Consideration of Haitian Resolution
Haiti Democracy Project
www.haitipolicy.org
project staff, 2002-08-02

The OAS today broke off consideration of the Haitian government's draft resolution calling for a renewal of loans. A compromise version had been worked on informally among delegations yesterday, but Haitian ambassador Valcin said he had to get instructions from his government. At the meeting of the Permanent Council today, no compromise version was presented and the meeting took up the Haitian resolution. The U.S. representative said that the United States could not support the electoral paragraphs of the Haitian draft proposal until his instructions were changed. The U.S. representative called for an interim draft consistent with Resolution 1841, at least until his government could work out a new approach to Haiti. All the other delegations, from Caricom, Central, and South America aligned themselves with the Haitian government proposal and some of them called the Democratic Convergence intransigent. Canada, however, deplored the polarization of the debate and thought it unwise to seek to isolate one delegation. No date was set for renewal of the discussions.