25155: (news) Chamberlain: Haiti needs reconciliation, interim PM says (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, May 20 (Reuters) - Haitians must reconcile and
build a future after last year's bloody rebellion, the volatile Caribbean
nation's interim prime minister said on Friday.
     In his strongest statement to date on the need for national
reconciliation, Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, whose opponents have
accused his government of holding political prisoners, said Haitians need
to give up their need for vengeance.
     "The moment has come for us to be reconciled with each other, to
forget about the past and to put all our energy into building the future,"
Latortue said in a statement aired on several radio stations.
     Latortue was installed after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was
ousted in February, 2004, following a rebellion by armed gangs and former
members of Haiti's military and under pressure from the United States and
France.
     International organizations and observers have stressed the need for
national reconciliation in Haiti, which is hobbled by political and gang
violence, before elections scheduled for later this year to choose a new
president and legislature.
     Latortue offered no specific proposals for reconciliation but said it
was the only way out for Haiti, which has struggled to overcome decades of
dictatorship and military rule.
     "Otherwise, each generation, each government will want to take its
revenge on the others and it will never end," he said. "We have been doing
that for two hundred years. I think enough is enough."
     Human rights groups say several hundred Aristide supporters and
officials of his Lavalas Family party, including former Prime Minister Yvon
Neptune, have been jailed without charges for nearly a year.
     Aristide supporters have said the release of prisoners would be a key
element of any plan for national reconciliation. Latortue did not say
whether his government would consider freeing Neptune.
     Rights groups and the U.N. Security Council, have raised concern about
Neptune's case and have urged the interim government to either try or free
him.
     Neptune, who served under Aristide, was arrested in June last year on
allegations that he masterminded what Aristide's opponents have called a
massacre on Feb. 11, 2004, in La Syrie, a village north of Port-au-Prince.
     U.N. officials who conducted an investigation dismissed the idea of a
massacre, attributing the deaths to confrontations between pro- and
anti-Aristide groups.
     Neptune started a hunger strike on April 17 to protest his detention
and is reported to be in failing health.