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25300: Hermantin(news)Pro-Aristide group slams peacekeepers in Haiti (fwd)




From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Mon, Jun. 06, 2005


ELECTIONS
Pro-Aristide group slams peacekeepers in Haiti
A U.S.-based group, the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, said U.N. peacekeepers in Haiti are an occupation force impeding free elections.
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
jcharles@herald.com

Haiti can have ''no peace, justice, democracy or fair elections'' while U.N. peacekeepers remain there, a group that backs former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide said Sunday in a statement to the Organization of American States.

''There can be no fair and free elections in Haiti while it is under occupation by foreign forces and Haiti's fair and freely elected and constitutionally appointed government officials are all ousted from office, in exile, in prison or have been killed,'' said the New York-based, pro-Aristide Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network.

The OAS opened its annual General Assembly Sunday in Fort Lauderdale.

The three-day session is expected to focus largely on the defense of Latin American and Caribbean democracy.

Aristide signed a letter of resignation and left Haiti last year amid an armed revolt that he has branded a virtual coup and kidnapping orchestrated against him by the U.S. and French governments. New elections have been scheduled for later this year, but armed Aristide supporters demanding his return have been clashing with the 7,400-strong U.N. peacekeeping force.

''Fear, terror, murder will not make the . . . elections-to-come in Haiti legitimate, nor will fingerprinting Haitians [for voter registration] somehow make this scheduled election any more legitimate,'' said Marguerite Laurent, spokeswoman for the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network.

''We urge the OAS, as a regional body dedicated to human rights and democratic ideals, to not only investigate the role of the U.S., France and Canada in bringing about the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d'état [against Aristide] but to take all necessary diplomatic steps to return to Haiti its democratically-elected government,'' the lawyers network's statement said.