21645: Esser: Decision next week on Caricom's call for Aristide probe (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Trinidad & Tobago Express
http://www.trinidadexpress.com

May 1st 2004

Decision next week on Caricom's call for Aristide probe
By Andy Johnson

A MEETING of the Caricom Bureau-scheduled for St John's, Antigua, on
Tuesday and Wednesday-is likely to decide upon the Caricom call for
an investigation into the circumstances surrounding Jean-Bertrand
Aristide's ouster from Haiti two months ago.

This is one of the conclusions coming out of a meeting of the
region's foreign ministers, which was held in Bridgetown last week.
The Caricom Bureau comprises the last chairman (Jamaica Prime
Minister PJ Patterson), the current chairman (Antigua Prime Minister
Baldwin Spencer), and the incoming chairman (Grenada Prime Minister
Dr Keith Mitchell).

Also at the Antigua meeting will be the core group of Prime Ministers
who have been carrying the executive ball for the region on the Haiti
question over the last six months. This group includes the Prime
Ministers of the Bahamas, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines,
and Trinidad and Tobago, along with Jamaica's Patterson.

"Considerable discussion" on the call for an investigation took place
at the meeting of foreign ministers last week, the Express has been
told, with a lot of the deliberations swinging on the fact that both
the United States and France are publicly opposed to any such idea.

The US and France as co-partners in the current international force
which moved in as Aristide was made to move out of his presidency and
his country on February 27, are likely to veto the idea for an
investigation if it is put to the United Nations Security Council,
the most likely place it can be made. They are also two of the five
permanent members of the Security Council.

When this was reiterated at the last inter-sessional summit of
Caricom Heads of Government in St Kitts in late March, reporters at
the final news conference early on the morning of March 27 had asked
about how it was going to go forward.

Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines,
said then that the leaders would consider legal advice on what was
the best route to take, whether through the UN Secretary General,
through the General Assembly or through the Security Council.

The leaders had made the original call for an investigation at the
end of their emergency meeting in Jamaica on March 3, in the wake of
Aristide's sudden and swift departure from Port au Prince. He had
ended up in the Central African Republic, with the plane stopping
briefly in Antigua. Early news coverage of those developments
reported friends of Aristide as saying he had told them he did not
leave voluntarily, that he had been kidnapped and forced out of
office and out of his country.

In an interview on TV6 Morning Edition two weeks after the St Kitts
meeting, however, Dr Gonsalves gave the first broad hint that the
call for an investigation was going nowhere. He said at the time it
had become clear the US was against it, suggesting on that basis the
request could not fly because if it ended up at the Security Council
it would be vetoed.

Extreme touchiness over this issue surfaced around that same time,
when Reginald Dumas, also on Morning Edition, said it appeared that
Caricom was dragging its feet. Dumas had been appointed Adviser on
Haiti to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, signing on to the
assignment two days before Aristide took his exit.

In a swift, uncharacteristic shot across the bow, this country's
Foreign Affairs Minister, Knowlson Gift, told a news conference in
Port of Spain the same day that Dumas had misspoken, and further that
he should concern himself with the terms of his remit on Haiti.

To date, however, the issue of the investigation remains an
unfinished symphony, with the decision at last week's meeting being
the latest intermezzo. We are at more than a month after St Kitts and
almost two months after Aristide's hasty retreat.

Sources tell the Express that in Barbados last week the ministers
considered reams of information on the matter, provided by officers
at Caricom missions at the UN in New York.

In his comments on Morning Edition, carried on March 19, Prime
Minister Gonsalves articulated a way out for Caricom, however. He
said this was one case in which Lloyd Best was correct in his firmly
held conviction that in many matters of public policy formulation
"talk is action".

Gonsalves repeated a view he had expressed in the earlier interview,
in which he said the world was aware that Caricom had concerns about
how Aristide left his country on February 28, and whether or not a
formal investigation was entered into, that fact would not change. He
said it was clear for all the see that Caricom did not accept the
version of those events as given by the United States. That, he said
in essence, would be good enough.

The US has maintained that it was involved in no plot to remove
Aristide, but Secretary of State Colin Powell has led a chorus of
official Washington position to the effect that Aristide has
despoiled the presidency in Haiti, had compromised his country's
fragile democracy and was the author of his own demise.

So strong were their feelings on the Haiti question, and so involved
were their discussions on the subject at the St Kitts meeting, that
the Caricom heads issued a separate statement as an attachment to the
conference communique. They said in it they "reiterated their view
that there had been an interruption of the democratic process in
Haiti". This was after also reiterating their call for the
investigation under the auspices of the UN, in light of what they
described as "the contradictory reports still in circulation
concerning the departure of President Aristide from office".

They believed, they said at the end of March also, it was "in the
interest of the international community that the preceding events and
all the circumstances surrounding the transfer of power from a
constitutionally elected Head of State, be fully investigated".

Next week's meeting in St John's will determine probably finally
whether all that talk should remain as tangible action on this
matter, given Dr Gonsalves's summation of what constitutes the
realities of international power politics.

And whereas the Guyanese diplomat and former broadcaster Hugh
Cholmondeley has been named to head the Caricom Task Force which will
co-ordinate the region's package of assistance to Haiti, the St
John's meeting will also decide on the person to be named Special
Envoy.

Both the decision to establish the Task Force and to appoint a
Special Envoy were taken at the St Kitts meeting. The Express
understands that a candidate has been identified as the Special
Envoy, but this requires ratification at the level of the heads.
.