24426: Hermantin(News)Aristide: I am still president (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Mon, Feb. 28, 2005



Aristide: I am still president
Exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide says that he will return to
Haiti and that he remains its president even a year after his ouster.
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
Miami Herald

A year after his ouster, Jean-Bertrand Aristide says he remains the
president of Haiti and is confident that he will one day return to his
homeland.

''Even though I am not physically in Haiti, I remain the president of the
Republic of Haiti,'' Aristide said in a recently filmed interview with
French journalist Claude Ribbe.

The three-minute video clip, made available on the Internet by the New
York-based Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, is part of an 11-minute
documentary that Ribbe plans to release, titled Aristide 1 Year Later.
Aristide has given few interviews since leaving Haiti one year ago.

Ribbe met with Aristide in Pretoria, South Africa, where the former Haitian
leader is living in exile with his wife, Mildred Trouillot, and their
children, following his Feb. 29, 2004, departure from Haiti after a bloody
monthlong rebellion.

During the interview, a calm and personable Aristide in a navy-blue suit
tells Ribbe that before his ouster, he was visited by two high-ranking
French emissaries -- Regis Debray and Veronique Albanel -- who threatened
him.

''Either you resign or you might be shot,'' Aristide said he was told.

Debray, famous for his support of leftist guerrillas in Latin America in the
1960s, is now the president of a commission on French-Haitian relations.
Albanel is the sister of former French Foreign Minister Dominique de
Villepin.

Both the French and U.S. governments have denied Aristide's allegations --
which he repeated to Ribbe -- that he was forced to resign and then
virtually kidnapped.

He alleged that about $50 million was spent in 2001 to finance a campaign of
character assassination and propaganda against him, followed by $71 million
to $74 million on the revolt that toppled him.

But he added in the interview that he is willing to engage in dialogue, even
with those involved in his ouster, to help pave the way for his return to
Haiti.

He said he believes that discussions on that subject are now taking place
through the Republic of South Africa and the president of the African Union,
Alpha Oumar Konare. Konare traveled to Port-au-Prince on Dec. 16 at the
invitation of Haiti's interim government, which opposes Aristide's return.