24022: Slavin: (editorial) Brazil's key role in Haiti (Charleston.Net 010304) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

from: jps390@aol.com

Story last updated at 8:31 a.m.  Monday, January 3, 2005

Brazil's key role in Haiti

http://www.charleston.net/stories/010305/edi_03edit2.shtml

The key to success in restoring stability in Haiti now rests with Brazil, which is playing its first major role as an international peacekeeper. At last month's meeting of South American presidents held in Cuzco, Peru, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula made a strong commitment, saying, "Haiti's extreme suffering is not an act of fate but, rather, of a perverse union of spurious interests and collective disinterest." He added: "In Haiti, we are not bearing stabilization at the points of bayonets. We are collaborating in the reconstruction of a country in which everything remains to be done."

It is an indication of the calamitous situation in Haiti that a proposal to place the chronically conflicted country under an international protectorate has been under discussion in diplomatic circles and in the media.

When Secretary of State Colin Powell was visiting Haiti last month he was questioned about the idea, but turned it down. Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue dismissed it angrily, saying he would not waste time discussing it.

But the proposal, launched by Don Bohning, retired chief Latin American correspondent of the Miami Herald who has been writing about Haiti for more than 30 years, will not go away until Haiti achieves at least a modicum of stability.

Mr. Bohning argues that "the current interim government, installed under U.S. tutelage following President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Feb. 29 flight into exile, has neither the popular support nor the capacity to meet the challenge of the country's ongoing disintegration."

There is no doubt that the government led by Mr. Latortue has little or no authority and scant popular support, but there are signs that security may be improving.

According to the United Nations, the Brazilian-led security force which has been deployed in Haiti since June, is gradually restoring law and order.

In the past few weeks the U.N. Mission for Stability in Haiti has disarmed and demobilized some of the armed groups that seized control of parts of the country and also dislodged gunmen who seized Mr. Aristide's private mansion. Former members of the Haitian army, which was disbanded by President Aristide, have been given back pay in return for giving up their arms.

If Brazil can succeed in Haiti where several combinations of international players have failed, South America's largest country will improve its chances of a permanent seat, with veto power, on the U.N. Security Council, and begin to realize the Brazilian dream of at last becoming a global power.

http://www.charleston.net/stories/010305/edi_03edit2.shtml

------------
J.P. Slavin
New York
------------