20391: Esser: Caricom's diplomatic offensive on Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

The Jamaica Observer
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com

Caricom's diplomatic offensive on Haiti

Sunday, March 14, 2004

ANALYSIS
by RICKEY SINGH

The controversies - in and out of Haiti - over the circumstances of
the dramatic downfall of the Aristide presidency, could prove an
excellent opportunity in the pursuit of a full-scale diplomatic
offensive by the Caribbean Community in its opposition to the illegal
removal from office of an elected head of government.

French and American lawyers were last week simultaneously resorting
to legal challenges over the removal of Jean-Bertrand Aristide from
power on Sunday, February 29, as the deposed Haitian leader kept
repeating in exile in the Central African Republic, his claim of
being a victim of a coup involving America and France.
At the same time, Jamaica's deputy minister of foreign affairs and
foreign trade, Delano Franklyn, who has been integrally involed as a
member of this country's negotiating team for a resolution to Haiti's
governance crisis, has sketched for public information Caricom's
initiatives on Haiti.

Franklyn has raised some very pertinent questions on the
controversial issue of whether or not Aristide's "resignation" was a
"voluntary or forced action". The questions would no doubt be
relevant to plans to press ahead for a United Nations-sponsored probe
into the circumstances of the departure from office of the Haitian
president.
Persuaded by information at their disposal, Caricom leaders who met
in Kingston between March 2 and 3, under Prime Minister P J
Patterson's chairmanship, were emphatic in declaring:

"The circumstances under which the president demitted office set a
dangerous precedent for democratically-elected governments everywhere
as it promotes the unconstitutional removal of duly-elected persons
from office..."
It was a concern to be quickly echoed by President Thabo Mbeki of
South Africa, a nation that had earlier linked its own current 10th
anniversary of freedom from the apartheid system as the "youngest"
Black nation, with Haiti's bicentennial anniversary as the oldest
Black nation of the world.

More significantly, by last week, while an interim president and an
interim prime minister were taking the oaths of office, even as
Aristide's loyal supporters passionately demonstrated for his return,
the 53-member African Union (AU), meeting in Addis Abba, Ethiopia,
was ready to openly echo the sentiments expressed by Caricom on the
dangerous implications of how Aristide was removed from power.
Small though it is in terms of sub-regional groupings, and with no
pretence at economic or political muscle, Caricom is, nevertheless,
well placed to influence support among its allies in the African,
Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group, as well as those within the
Association of Caribbean States (ACS) and the Organisation of
American States (OAS) in mobilising the widest possible demand for an
independent probe - all in defence of democratic, constitutional
governance.

The fact that President Robert Mugabe's party and Government continue
to make a farce of democratic government in Zimbabwe and remain
guilty of gross human rights violations, should not preclude Caricom,
the AU, the OAS and other groupings of states from fiercely exposing
the dangers of foreign powers moving into a sovereign nation with
troops and taking out an elected head of state.
Here, in the Western Hemisphere, potential allies would include
powerful nations like Brazil - which has already declared its
opposition to joining any multi-national military force in
post-Aristide Haiti - as well as Venezuela, whose president continues
to warn against externally-instigated violent demonstrations to oust
him from power.

Under Article 18 of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, the OAS
could be challenged into an emergency session to review Haiti's
status in view of the circumstances of Aristide's removal from office.
The unfolding of the Caricom strategy to secure a UN-sponsored probe
into Aristide's loss of power may coincide with the forthcoming
Inter-Sessional Meeting of community leaders in St Kitts later this
month.
But quiet, co-ordinated diplomatic initiatives would have to be
vigorously pursued well before the St Kitts meeting, knowing that
both Washington and Paris are engaged in their own manoeuvres to
undermine efforts for an independent international probe.

Prime Minister Patterson, speaking on behalf of Caricom, has already
made it abundantly clear that post-Aristide arrangements in Haiti
have nothing to do with Caricom's Action Plan for a compromise
solution to the Haitian governance crisis. At the core of that plan
was for Aristide to be permitted to complete his elected six-year
presidential term that ends in February 2006.
It would be some time yet before we get through the fog of political
somersaults and the deceit spun by the USA and France in relation to
Caricom's Action Plan and Aristide's "resignation" that were quickly
followed, within 24 hours, by American, French and Canadian troops on
Haitian soil.

Already, however, comparisons are being made between what happened in
Haiti on February 29, 2004 - when a hastily-installed chief justice
as interim president hurriedly "requested" a foreign military
presence - and what occurred in little Grenada on October 25, 1983
when a United States military invasion was reportedly "invited" by
the then governor-general - after a "revolution" devoured itself.
It was US Secretary of State Colin Powell who had stated, following a
February 13 Washington meeting with representatives of Caricom,
France, Canada and the OAS, that backed the Caricom Action Plan, that
there was no question of "regime change" in Port-au-Prince since
Aristide, for all his faults, was the elected president of Haiti.

However, political subterfuge resulted in things quickly falling
apart. The anti-opposition forces in Haiti, by then unofficially
embracing criminals and armed rebels on the anti-Aristide warpath,
rejected the Caricom Action Plan - without a word of rebuke from the
USA, France and Canada.
The Haitian chief justice, Boniface Alexandre, who reportedly signed
the letter as interim president to request the multi-national
military force, was still not lawfully functioning in that capacity
when the troops arrived. His endorsement as interim head of state
must come from a Haitian parliament. But no such parliament is in
place.

Some 21 years earlier, then Governor-General Paul Scoon of Grenada
also controversially made a "request" for the US military invasion of
October 25, 1983. No written evidence was ever produced of that
"request", and he was quite safely on board the US warship Guam while
the American troops were already swarming across the Isle of Spice,
to "free" it from a claimed Cuban involvement in an international
communist conspiracy.
There are lessons from Grenada to Haiti on how foreign powers can
engage in disinformation and manipulate military intervention in a
sovereign state.
.