13302: Wharram posts - New York Times editorial "U.S. Blame in Haiti" (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Bruce Wharram <bruce.wharram@sev.org>


         September 30, 2002


   U.S. Blame in Haiti



[T] o the Editor:

Re "Helping Haiti" (editorial, Sept. 25):

Washington deserves a great share of the blame for Haiti's poverty
crisis. Last year the International Republican Institute gathered the
myriad Haitian political parties (some call them particles) into a
coalition named Democratic Convergence.

But when the Convergence formed its own parallel government, Washington
rewarded that coalition by treating those law breakers as equal to the
Haiti's president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Can we imagine Al Gore
forming his own government because he did not like the result of the
2000 presidential election?

The Bush administration's policy on Haiti, led at the State Department
by the archconservative Otto Reich, has been a failure thus far because
it is based on a fundamental dislike of Mr. Aristide rather than on the
interest of stability in the region.
 JEAN JEAN-PIERRE
Spring Valley, N.Y., Sept. 25, 2002