23113: Esser: Haiti-new doubts, questions (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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

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

Haiti-new doubts, questions
By RICKEY SINGH

September 8th 2004

PLANNING is going ahead for the proposed special Caricom Summit in
Port of Spain that should begin on November 4 with a meeting of the
Prime Ministerial Working Group on "new governance" options to
enhance regional integration.

But do not be surprised if the three-day meeting of Community Heads
of Government fails to take place due to lingering divisions on the
basis for "full engagement" with the interim Haitian regime.

Current Caricom chairman Prime Minister Keith Mitchell told me in a
brief telephone interview on Monday that so far as he was concerned,
"efforts are quietly continuing to get some consensus on a resolution
to the problem of full engagement with the interim Haitian
administration".

He said he would "remain optimistic, but would not wish to speculate
on what may happen should we fail to reach a common understanding
ahead of the proposed special summit in Port of Spain".

Secretary General Edwin Carrington, just back at his desk after a
brief August vacation, said he also would be surprised if the special
summit does not take place.

He is due in Barbados today for a meeting with Prime Minister Owen
Arthur, who has lead responsibility for implementation arrangements
for the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME).

According to some in a position to know, divisions persist among the
Community leaders about any possibility of a resolution of the
impasse on Caricom's collective engagement with the interim Haitian
regime-as distinct from bilateral relations between member states and
the administration in Port-au-Prince.

Further, it is felt that it may be better to avoid a row over Haiti
at the special summit during the very week of the presidential
election in the USA.

It is known that the US administration of the incumbent George W Bush
was actively involved in the installation of the interim regime in
Port-au-Prince of which the controversial Gerard Latortue is the
Prime Minister.

But those leaders anxious to resolve the impasse on full engagement
with the Latortue regime also have serious reservations about
"wasting precious time" arguing over Haiti at the special summit
which was originally scheduled to focus primarily on CSME-readiness
and the inauguration of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).

I have been bluntly told that unless there could be some clear
understanding about a common resolve to "move the CSME-readiness
process forward" at the coming November meeting, then it would be
pointless for the leaders gathering in Port of Spain to "row over the
timing and basis for engagement with the Haitian regime".

One Prime Minister of the eastern Caribbean did not conceal his
strong disapproval that private communication on the "engagement
impasse" over the Latortue regime should have been made public by
another Prime Minister.

This was clearly a reference to the communication between Prime
Minister Mitchell and the Vincentian Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves.

Gonsalves has made it clear that he has no intention of attending any
Caricom meeting at which Latortue is an invitee, before there is
collective understanding on the basis for "full engagement" in
accordance with the spirit and letter of the March communique of
Heads of Government, and subsequent related positions.

Also holding a firm line on the conditionalities for "collective"
engagement with the Haitian regime is the Prime Minister of St Lucia,
Kenny Anthony, who has lead responsibility for Governance and Justice
in Caricom.

Prime Minister Arthur of Barbados recently went public with his
declaration that his government reserved the right to engage fully
with the Haitian regime, and, by implication, that it was not
necessarily waiting for a collective approach by the Community.

But Gonsalves, as well as Anthony, are on record as having earlier
separately stated that it has always been the understanding that any
member state of Caricom was free to engage in bilateral relations
with the Haitian regime, and even establish diplomatic relations, as
already exist between Haiti and The Bahamas and Jamaica.

Amid the prevailing uncertainty about the special summit in Port of
Spain, there is also concern over what ever happened to Caricom's
original call, back in March at the emergency summit hosted by Prime
Minister PJ Patterson in Kingston, for an independent international
probe into the circumstances surrounding the sudden departure from
office on February by the elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.

Six months later, it is time for an official explanation, especially
since there is good reason to say that no official request was ever
made to the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, for
such an international investigation.

Nor was any official effort made to get a meeting of the UN General
Assembly to at least discuss the circumstances of Aristide's fall
from power.

Further, it is now also known that when Caricom eventually moved to
involve the Permanent Council of the Organisation of American States
(OAS) in undertaking such an investigation within the context of the
Inter-American Democratic Charter with particular reference to
Article 20, Barbados, surprisingly, was not among the co-sponsors of
the resolution.

In the end, the initiative was frustrated and it was not until the
OAS General Assembly meeting in Quito that a rather truncated
resolution was approved to mandate the Permanent Council to assess
the governance problem in post-Aristide Haiti and to produce a report.

Question: What exactly has been done, if anything, by the OAS
Permanent Council since the meeting of the General Assembly?

Further, is it true that the mood at a recent meeting of Caricom
ambassadors to the OAS was so tense that it may well have signalled
more negative vibes for a possible positive outcome soon among the
Community's Heads of Government on engagement with the Haitian regime?
.