Conflict over 'correction' letter from Haiti's PM
By Rickey Singh
Guyana Chronicle
March 28, 2004
BASSETERRE - The Caribbean Community has taken issue with interim Haitian Prime Minister, Gerard Latortue, over his conflicting positions on his public announcement to freeze Haiti's membership with CARICOM, originally accessed in 1998.
A copy of the English translation of a letter he sent to CARICOM last Wednesday on the eve of the opening of the just-concluded 15th Inter-Sessional Conference of Community leaders in St. Kitts, was yesterday obtained by the Sunday Chronicle.
It reveals his failure to repudiate what is officially viewed as anti-CARICOM sentiment and an unwarranted negative attitude to Jamaica which has played a key role, along with The Bahamas, St. Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago, for a constitutional resolution to the Haitian crisis.
Latortue's declaration of the "freezing of relations with Jamaica" (for providing temporary asylum to ousted President Jean Bertrand Aristide) and his expressed "putting-to-sleep" statement of Haiti's relations with CARICOM, had stiffened opposition to extending any immediate recognition of the post-Aristide administrative authority in Port-au-Prince.
Subsequently came his embrace at a political rally in his hometown of Gonaives of armed rebels as "liberators" and "freedom fighters" from the Aristide dictatorship.
Those developments, as CARICOM was to subsequently state, "had not made it possible to receive the interim administration in the Councils of the Community so as to be afforded audience (a requested meeting by Latortue) with the Heads of Government on Haiti's participation in CARICOM..."
Had Latortue been more sensitive to the Community's concerns over his public utterances, said various CARICOM leaders during their Inter-Sessional Meeting, there may have been the possibility of his "requested audience" but without confusing such a development with official recognition of his interim regime.
In contrast, Latortue contends in his letter of March 24, addressed to the Community's Secretary General, Edwin Carrington that:
“My government has never announced and has no intention of announcing any putting to sleep, suspension or breaking off of relations between Haiti and CARICOM or any of its member states (implicit reference to Jamaica)...
"Therefore", he further stated, "there is no cause to repudiate nor to go back on any decision which has never been taken. It would be regrettable if these misinterpretations or errors in translation of statements made in Creole or in French, should alter relations which need to be developed..."
The CARICOM leaders felt this explanation did not square with Latortue's statements, some of which were reported live by regional/international media.
They, however, agreed to "review" the matter of Haiti-CARICOM relations generally, including likely dealings with what they view as an administrative authority in Port-au-Prince, when they assemble again in St. George's, Grenada for their 25th annual regular summit in July.
In the meanwhile, a CARICOM Task Force, being established by Secretary General Carrington to coordinate "assistance to Haiti in those (unspecified) areas where it (the Community) has the capacity"
A soon-to-be-appointed Special Envoy of the Community will work closely with the Task Force as well as with efforts to mount a United Nations-backed investigation into the fall of the Aristide presidency.