21809: Esser: Haiti Fades as Washington's Shadow Grows (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. E s s e r <torx@joimail.com>

Inter Press Service News Agency IPS
http://www.ipsnews.net

May 10, 2004

POLITICS-CANADA:
Haiti Fades as Washington's Shadow Grows
by Paul Weinberg

One of the little noticed outcomes of February's ouster of Haitian
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide appears to be the concept of a
Canadian foreign policy that differs from Washington's on major
international issues, say critics of Liberal Prime Minister Paul
Martin.

TORONTO, May 10 (IPS) - As a rebel uprising swept south towards
Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince in February, Canada joined the United
States and France in side-stepping efforts by the Caribbean Community
(CARICOM) to broker a power-sharing deal that would have kept
Aristide as president and allowed his democratically elected
administration, the country's first, to maintain power until the next
election.

Instead, civilian opposition groups rejected the proposal, and the
former priest and champion of the poor was forced from Haiti on Feb.
29, under some form of pressure from Washington and Paris. The armed
rebels -- linked to the disbanded Haitian army and past human rights
violations -- seized power.

Canada accepts the U.S./French version of the events: that Aristide
signed a letter of resignation Feb. 29 ”to avoid bloodshed”, Canadian
official Patrick Riel told IPS.

Although Ottawa ”shares” CARICOM's concerns about Haiti -- the
grouping has still not decided if it will recognise the interim
government in Port-au-Prince -- Ottawa does not support its call for
a probe into Aristide's claim he was ”kidnapped” and secreted to the
Central African Republic, adds Riel of the department of foreign
affairs and international trade.

”We said we had no information that indicates that there should be
support for this investigation.”

Past Canadian governments might have questioned the exiling of a
democratically chosen president and the international legal
implications of that act, say critics of Martin, who came to office
last December.

What seems different now is that the new administration is keen to
develop closer security and military ties with the neighbouring
United States to ensure minimal disruption of trade across the
nations' common border under the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA).

Alexa McDonough, foreign affairs critic for the opposition New
Democratic Party (NDP) says she has noticed a ”me-too” attitude in
the Martin administration in relation to the policies of U.S.
President George W Bush. ”I think how quickly Canada rushed into
Haiti, without thinking it through,” she says in an interview.

McDonough says, for example, that troops of the U.S.-led
multinational force that will be replaced by U.N. peacekeepers Jun.
1, ”have no real game plan” to disarm armed gangs and other criminals
in Haiti.

On Monday, the Haiti Support Group said that ”armed irregulars”,
including former rebels and soldiers, continued to rule in many parts
of the country, taking over both police and government offices by
force.

Government officials have also issued a formal call for former
soldiers to report to authorities with an aim to incorporate them
into a revamped police force, the group added in a statement from
London.

McDonough says Martin's naming of David Pratt as his defence minister
helped set the pace for a pro-U.S. Canadian foreign policy.

While the new prime minister publicly supports the decision made one
year ago by his predecessor, former Prime Minister Jean Chretien, to
keep Canada out of the U.S.-led war on Iraq, Pratt is a former chair
of parliament's defence committee who lost the battle within the
Liberal Party to send Canadian soldiers to participate in the
toppling of the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

With Martin and Pratt in their present jobs, a former Canadian
diplomat who wishes to remain anonymous doubts that Ottawa will stake
out foreign policy stands that are substantially different from
Washington's, particularly after snubbing Bush's ”coalition of the
willing” as it invaded Iraq.

That explains Martin's Haiti policy, he suggests. ”I don't think
anybody (in Ottawa) said we were hugely happy about that decision” --
Aristide's removal, the ex-diplomat told IPS. ”I guess if you are
Canada, you don't want to rub a whole lot more salt in the (U.S.')
wounds. So in other areas, you are inclined to be a little more
co-operative.”

Washington-based analyst Larry Birns, who followed closely CARICOM's
mediation efforts in Haiti, argues that the Government of Jamaica
demonstrated more backbone in opposing Washington's Haiti policy than
Martin's government, which was ”simply sitting in the closet, afraid
to come out.”

”Here you have a country like Jamaica with a troubled economy,
totally dependent upon U.S. goodwill for affirmative votes in the
lending agencies and for bilateral treatment, daring to challenge the
U.S. on its Haiti policy, on the treatment of Aristide,” says Birns,
director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

Birns says ambassadors of CARICOM nations he spoke to in Washington
were considerably disappointed with the passive approach of ”big
brother” Canada to the Haiti crisis. (IPS was unable to get a comment
from the Jamaican consulate general in Toronto on Caribbean reaction
to Canada's Haiti policy.)

Although Canada has strong economic, political and cultural ties with
both the English and French speaking islands in the Caribbean, Ottawa
has in recent months demonstrated ”a decline of interest in the
region,” says Birns.

”What Haiti needed at that time (during CARICOM's mediation efforts)
was the Canadians to come forth to say, 'we are prepared to send in
(a maximum of 1,000 soldier) in order to preserve the democratic
process in Haiti and not let mob violence rid that country, produce
an extra-constitutional denouement to the problem'.”

Carlo Dade, an Ottawa-based political expert on Haiti suggests it
would not take more than a few thousand peacekeeping solders to
disarm thuggish elements in Haiti.

It was the failure of Canadian and U.S. officials to complete their
training and recruitment for the Haitian police in the early 1990s
(following Aristide's U.S.-brokered return after a coup) that helped
to create the conditions of lawlessness today in the impoverished
country, adds Dade, a senior advisor for the Canadian Foundation for
the Americas.

The U.N. Security Council has approved a two-year peacekeeping force
for Haiti, to include 6,700 soldiers and 1,622 civilian police
officers.

”Does this add up to a long term commitment?” Dade asks. The jury is
out, he responds, until all of the humanitarian aid promised by
international donors arrives and disarmament has occurred, which will
then allow aid personnel to enter Haiti safely.

But he adds that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan originally
discussed keeping peacekeepers in the troubled nation ”for 10 years.”

The prospect of the world forgetting about Haiti until the next
crisis arises and another international military intervention is
needed is on the mind of Franz Voltaire, director of the Haitian,
Caribbean and Afro-Canadian International Documentation and
Information Centre, in Montreal.

One of more than 100,000 people of Haitian origin living in Canada,
the majority in French-speaking Quebec, Voltaire urges Canada to take
the lead ”pushing the other countries” to rebuild the political and
economic infrastructure in Haiti, including the police and justice
system.

Unfortunately, adds Voltaire, ”you can't expect much action until
after the national election this year in Canada and the U.S.”
.