18739: Esser: Powell: Aristide fairly and freely elected (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D Esser torx@joimail.com

Colin Powell Remarks With Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds
Following Meeting [excerpt]

State Department, 2004-02-18

Secretary Colin L. Powell
Washington, DC
February 17, 2004

(11:35 a.m. EST)

[...]

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, on Haiti, the opposition says that Aristide
needs to leave before there can be free and fair elections there,
parliamentary elections. Do you believe that there can be free and
fair elections with Aristide still in Haiti?

SECRETARY POWELL: Yes. He is, right now, the free and fairly elected
President of Haiti. And so we have put forward with the United
Nations and with CARICOM and the OAS a good plan, the CARICOM plan,
that we believe both sides should take to heart and stop the violence
on both sides and move forward to find a political solution to this
crisis. But we cannot buy into a proposition that says the elected
President must be forced out of office by thugs and those who do not
respect law and are bringing terrible violence to the Haitian people.

We have a serious humanitarian problem there now. We are sending
people from the United States, OAS and other international
organizations down to see what we can do about that humanitarian
crisis, and we are also working with the OAS and others to see if we
cannot get a dialogue going between President Aristide and his
government and the opposition forces.

The opposition forces have taken on new dimensions. Some reflect
political opposition leaders, but we also have thugs who can't
reasonably be called opposition, and we also have some individuals
coming back into the country who had formerly been excluded from
civil life in Haiti, for very good reasons; they're murderers and
thugs, and we can't expect anyone to deal with these kinds of
individuals.

One more, and then I'm afraid I have to go.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, last week you said that there were
discussions going on about possibly sending police into Haiti. Is the
United States considering sending its own police or other forces to
quell the violence?

SECRETARY POWELL: No. The discussion that we had last week with our
CARICOM and OAS friends had to do with sending in police to sustain a
political settlement, not to go in and put down the current violence.
There is, frankly, no enthusiasm right now for sending in military or
police forces to put down the violence that we are seeing.

What we want to do right now is find a political solution, and then
there are willing nations that would come forward with a police
presence to implement the political agreement that the sides come to.

So it is important now for us to push for a political solution, not
only between the efforts of the United States and the UN and the OAS
and CARICOM, we're also working with the Francophone group, and I
spoke to French Foreign Minister de Villepin about the situation this
morning, and France is also willing to play a role in all of this.

[...]

2004/167

.