U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has characterized the Caribbean as America's third border, with whom the United States needs to have a strong and mutually respectful relationship. And we sensed in the overtures by Roger Noriega, the Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) this effort of a real partnership.

There was a growing appreciation, it seemed, of the irrelevance of a relationship built on the remnants on President Munroe's old dictum about the Americas and on the basis of relative size and power. What has been emerging, we thought, was a relationship that found its context in morality, which, critically, underpins the democratic ideal.

We hope that what we thought we saw was not a mirage but a genuine process, which will continue.

For such a relationship to evolve, it has to have a basis in trust. And as the powerful, and dominant, partner in such a relationship, it falls to the United States, the world's lone superpower, to act to reassure naturally wary neighbours.

In this regard, the United States needs to start by re-evaluating its approach to Haiti and the signal it is sending about its support for the democratic process, as opposed to uncritical backing for its ideological kin.

It is no secret that the current U.S. administration is not particularly enamored with Haiti's incumbent leader, President Jean Bertrand Aristide, who is now under pressure from an opposition attempting to hound him out of office. Their actions have placed Haiti on the verge of civil war and a coup d'etat against Mr. Aristide.

We hold no particular brief for President Aristide. We do not believe that he has showed the large, expansive vision we had hoped. There is something, however, of more fundamental importance, than our perception of the failings of Mr. Aristide. We believe in democracy and the democratic process.

But Haiti's opposition insists that Mr. Aristide must step down now, two years ahead of the end of his constitutional term. The vote for a new president, in so far as there could be one - which we doubt - would coincide with the vote for a new national assembly.

In essence, the Haitian opposition is proposing a constitutional coup - Mr. Aristide's forced resignation. And if that is not possible a coup d'etat by any means.

Many who now fuel this violence from the shadows were among those who orchestrated Mr. Aristide's overthrow in 1991 and are the scions of the beneficiaries of the rightist dictatorships that for too long throttled Haiti.

It should not be allowed to happen. The message must be sent to the Haitian opposition that violence is not an acceptable tool by which to unseat a democratically elected government. They must know that what is being attempted in Haiti is the antipathy of democracy.

We believe that a powerful, and moral, United States is in the best position to help guarantee this principle in Haiti and elsewhere in our region - America's third border.

What the United States should be doing therefore, is not sending signals that replacing Mr. Aristide might not be too bad a development.

Rather, Secretary of State Powell should be sending a clear message to the opposition that the chosen route to power should be through the ballot box in legislative elections. He should also be telling Ambassador Noriega that America will join sponsorship on the Kingston Accord which President Aristide arrived at with CARICOM leaders.

These undertakings, we believe, provide the best road map for leading Haiti back to democracy. A violent removal of President Aristide will serve only to keep Haiti on a perpetual cycle of violence and misery, unless those who have promoted and, or, backed this course assume that neither Mr. Aristide nor his Lavalas movement have no support.

Or, perhaps they listen too much to their own reports that the current violence is only by Aristide's supporters.

Should the United States fail to take the moral high road it could find itself, even in this post-Cold War world, "losing" the Caribbean. And as for Secretary Powell, there is the potentially greater burden of being shunned by the ancestors. --- Jamaica Observer