#522: Haiti President To Visit Washington (fwd)

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From:nozier@tradewind.net

Friday September 17 2:57 PM ET 
Haiti President To Visit Washington

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - Haitian President Rene Preval will
travel to Washington this weekend to meet the Congressional Black Caucus
to discuss preparations for the country's upcoming elections, officials
said Friday.Preval was scheduled to travel to the United States on
Saturday for a 48-hour visit.Last week, a six-member bipartisan U.S.
congressional delegation led by Rep. John Conyers, dean of the Black
Caucus, visited Haiti on a fact-finding mission to study preparations
for legislative and municipal elections scheduled for December.The
elections are more than a year overdue and would be Haiti's first
nationwide balloting since April 1997.``The invitation from Congressman
Conyers is an expression of his confidence in President Preval to carry
through on his
commitment to democracy,'' said Carl Le Van, a legislative aide to
Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan.Preval has been ruling Haiti without a
parliament since January 1999, when he declared the terms of most
legislators over.Elections are widely viewed as a way to reestablish
Haiti's democratic institutions.