23031: Esser: Haiti Still a Sore Point Within CARICOM (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser <torx@joimail.com>

Inter Press Service Newsw Agency
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=25167

CARIBBEAN:
Haiti Still a Sore Point Within CARICOM

Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Aug 20 (IPS) - As the split within the Caribbean
Community (CARICOM) over whether the regional grouping should engage
the interim administration in Haiti lingers, there are fears the
nations may find themselves isolated internationally on the issue.

"Our current diplomacy on this Haitian issue is too limited," warns
Vaughan Lewis, a professor in the Institute of International
Relations at the University of the West Indies (UWI).

"It is too bound, conceptually, within our perspectives of the power
of the United States. It is not recognising an evolving
multilateralism that can be beneficial to us in the medium to long
run, if we engage with other significant countries early," he told
IPS.

Lewis says Caribbean countries are mistakenly seeing the Haitian
crisis -- sparked by the ouster of former President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide in February and the swift dispatch of a United
Nations-sanctioned military force days later -- "as a narrowly
CARICOM issue".

"I believe that CARICOM's decision-making on this matter, even though
our institution is an independent or autonomous one, should be
informed by the diplomacy of critical intermediary countries like
Brazil; and also those of Canada, whose perspectives on her own
intervention in the crisis would have been informed by the fact of a
large Haitian population, a Haitian diaspora, in that country," added
Lewis.

Grenadian Prime Minister Keith Mitchell, the current CARICOM
chairman, has said it is possible the region's leaders will meet in a
special summit before November to finally reach a consensus position
on whether to engage the U.S.-backed interim administration in
Port-au-Prince.

"We do not wish to see any division in CARICOM on any issue," he told
IPS, acknowledging the "delicate" position the region finds itself,
particularly after CARICOM leaders failed to meet an Aug. 16 deadline
to indicate their collective stand on Haiti.

"You are quite aware that a couple of leaders have expressed
themselves publicly on the issue," he added.

St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves was the
first to publicly indicate he opposes the recommendation of five
Caribbean foreign ministers, who returned from Haiti in July
indicating they were pleased with progress being made by Gerard
Latortue's government to uphold justice and to hold elections next
year.

Stressing that he has nothing personally against Latortue and is not
holding a brief for Aristide, Gonsalves was adamant that his stand on
Haiti is based on principle.

"As far as I am concerned, what there is in Haiti does not pass
muster for CARICOM," he told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).
"Unequivocal evidence" is needed from the ground of the country's
return to democracy, and that opposition groups, including Aristide's
Lavalas Party, are engaging in normal political activities, he added.

Gonsalves' position has been supported by Dominica, Guyana and St
Lucia. The latter's position is that CARICOM's 15 nations should not
be rushed into re-engaging the Latortue administration.

Aristide, now in exile in South Africa, maintains he was taken from
Haiti on a U.S.-ordered jet, a charge Washington has emphatically
denied. Soon after, CARICOM called publicly for the United Nations to
investigate the leader's exit, a move that was never heeded, due
largely to intervention from U.S. and French officials, according to
diplomats.

CARICOM has also urged the Organisation of American States to assess
the "unconstitutional alteration" of the government in Haiti, a
process that is ongoing, an OAS official told IPS this week.

According to acting St Lucian Prime Minister Mario Michel, "We
believe that the situation should be properly studied and a course of
action taken by CARICOM that is in the best interest of Haiti and the
region as a whole."

"At this juncture, we think it is premature for CARICOM or individual
members to rush to a position of recognising the existing regime in
Haiti," he added Wednesday.

Michel was reacting to statements by the Barbados government, which
said Tuesday it is prepared to "engage directly with the interim
administration, both bilaterally and in partnership with other
like-minded states, within the context of the United Nations
Stabilisation Mission", should CARICOM fail to reach consensus.

Barbados Prime Minister Owen Arthur said from the outset of the
crisis that his island firmly supported the "position of principle
taken by CARICOM," while giving "equal consideration to the need to
support the people of Haiti in their search for a peaceful solution
to the political crisis."

Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer said in a
statement Wednesday that re-engaging the interim administration "in
my view does not in any way destroy the stance that we had taken
initially: that we could not under the circumstances allow this
interim regime to be welcomed into the halls of CARICOM."

Antigua and Barbados are among a dozen CARICOM nations, including the
Bahamas, Grenada and Jamaica, which have been pushing to re-engage
the Government of Haiti.

Arthur has warned that CARICOM cannot expect to be a partner in
Haiti's reconstruction if it is not prepared to fully engage the
Latortue administration.

"To fail to do so would in our view be an amazing departure from the
principle and practice of diplomatic relations, and would leave us on
the periphery of actions of vital relevance to a member of our
community in whose future development and prosperity we have a vested
interest," Arthur said.

Lewis agrees. He says the region might find itself isolated if it
continues to look for a solution to Haiti's presence in CARICOM
outside of a diplomatic engagement of countries within this
hemisphere and beyond.

"CARICOM leaders, in this time of great volatility in our
international affairs, need to look at the bigger picture again."

"They must use the Haitian crisis to engage France, and therefore the
European Union, in a diplomacy that will contribute to framing the
terms of the new Regional Economic Participation Agreement that we
have started to negotiate with them, so that assistance to Haiti
becomes, in part, a means of strengthening the regional integration
process, which must, inevitably, encompass a reviving Haiti," Lewis
argued.

"If the French are favourable to this longer-term view of the Haitian
crisis, then there is no point in opposing, for any length of time,
the interim government's presence in the CARICOM system. Our
relationship with Haiti would be, additionally a part of the
diplomacy of developing the CARICOM-French-EU relationship of the
future," he added.

But Mitchell sounded a warning note, in response to this week's
acquittal in a Haitian court of Louis Jodel Chamblain -- a leader of
the rebellion that sparked Aristide's ouster earlier this year -- of
the 1993 murder of a minister in the former president's government.

"Obviously that cannot help, because from reports it appears that the
due process may not have been followed and is certainly something we
in the region would be concerned about," said Mitchell.

"So clearly everything that happens positively helps the cause of
engagement in Haiti, and everything that does not happen in that
direction certainly complicates matters."
.