The mandate emerged from the just-concluded emergency summit of Community leaders in Kingston, Jamaica, and will be restricted to still to be specified areas where CARICOM has "the capacity" to provide required aid.

Expected to be of a humanitarian nature, the assistance to be mobilised for Haitians, will be done without any dealings with rebel elements and others associated with last Sunday's forced resignation of President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

Secretary General Carrington will be working closely with the current chairman of CARICOM, Prime Minister P.J.Patterson of Jamaica, in the mounting of the regional Task Force on aid coordination to Haiti, it was learnt yesterday. Patterson had coordinated and chaired the emergency summit in Kingston.

Yesterday, while questions were being raised about the powers that could be constitutionally exercised by Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, an appointee of the deposed Aristide, there came an announcement from the lawyer of the exiled Haitian leader about his "communication frustrations" in the Central African Republic (CAR).

According to "UN Observer and International Report", American lawyer, Ira Kurzban, disclosed that he had "just learned" that the authorities in the CAR "has shut off President Aristide's phone service".

Further, he said, armed members of the French and CAR military were guarding President Aristide and "he is not free to move".

The lawyer has called for "an immediate investigation" by the United States Congress into the circumstances played by the George Bush administration in the removal from power of Aristide.

Kurzban is demanding that the President, now in forced exile, be given full access to the media and those with whom he wants to communicate.

Meanwhile, both Haiti's ambassador to the Organisation of American States (OAS), Raymond Valcin, and Consul General in New York, Harry Fouche, said that Aristide remains "the lawful President" of the country.

And "Democracy Now", a human rights watchdog network with radio and television news programme on some 200 community-based stations in the USA, announced yesterday that it was seeking the views of the Centre for Constitutional Rights on what will be the position of the OAS and the United Nations in terms of official recognition of Aristide.