18002: (Arthur) Pressure grows on Haiti opposition (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tttnhm@aol.com

Pressure grows on Haiti opposition - BBC News 16 January 2004

Pressure is growing on Haiti's opposition to attend meetings and help pave
the way for fresh elections to end the country's political crisis.

Caricom is expected to meet the opposition leaders next week in the Bahamas
at a meeting which the Prime Ministers of the Bahamas, Jamaica, St Lucia, and
Trinidad and Tobago are scheduled to attend.

When Caricom leaders met with Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide at the
Summit of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico earlier this week they urged him
to follow up on a promise to hold fresh elections within six months.

The Haitian leader was given a similar push by US President George Bush at
the same meeting.

However, the opposition in Haiti has initially refused to attend such talks
saying that Aristide was the problem.

Bahamas Prime Minister Perry Christie, who is expected to play a leading role
in the talks, said dialogue now appears to be the best means of resolving the
current crisis.

"We are all committed to free and fair elections, dedicating resources from
our respective countries, with the help of other countries in the hemisphere,
to create a framework from which we are able to guarantee free and fair
elections," he said.

"When we do these things and the opposition continues to refuse to
participate, then the world will see," Christie said.

Despite calls for his resignation, President Jean Bertrand Aristide, who is
now ruling by decree, says he will stay in office.

He is optimistic that the opposition will attend the talks and pledged to
support any effort in the name of democracy.

"Democracy means a process where we criticise, we say what we want without
violence, in such a way to keep moving and building.

"Through dialogue, through compromise, let us have a peaceful solution, not a
violent one so we will have to go this way to find that process of dialogue
and compromise in order to have elections and move ahead."


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This email is forwarded as a service of the Haiti Support Group.

See the Haiti Support Group web site:
www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org

Solidarity with the Haitian people's struggle for justice, participatory
democracy and equitable development, since 1992.
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