CARICOM AND HAITI

CARICOM finds itself today in a very difficult situation and we really would like to see how it is going to be resolved. Having committed itself to be part of peace-keeping in Haiti, it must  nonetheless resist any overtures by the Government of the United States for the Regional body to recognise the interim Government of Haiti. Instead CARICOM’s involvement in Haiti must be seen as a principled position, that of maintaining a peace-keeping presence in a troubled Member State, the overthrow of whose President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, along with his ouster and reportedly forced exile, it has questioned.

The Caribbean Community of Nations should not allow itself to be sidetracked, if only for the second time in its history, otherwise it risks being accused of readily responding to US bidding. The first incident was in October of 1983, when the majority of CARICOM States, with the noted exception of Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, agreed to invite the United States to intervene militarily in Grenada, when late Prime Minister, Maurice Bishop, had been removed from Office.

The most telling hint that the United States was pressuring CARICOM to recognise Haiti came, however inadvertently, from the Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister, who even as he stated that he did not “know that anyone was being pressured,” nonetheless declared, unequivocally, that he knew that “the Government of the US would like CARICOM Governments to recognise Haiti.” He had prefaced that by stating, interestingly, that the US was not bullying Trinidad and Tobago or any other CARICOM nation into supporting the interim Haitian Government of PM Gerard Latortue.

It was a Freudian slip, to be followed in quick succession by yet another, again unintentionally, when he offered that like St Vincent and the Grenadines PM, Dr Ralph Gonsalves, he, too, had received a letter from the United States State Department. However, Manning would add, apropos of nothing: “The US is conducting its own foreign policy.” To this we add, so should this country and any other Member State of the Caribbean Community of Nations. Indeed, the Community should present a continuous policy position on Haiti. We should not have to remind that Jamaica, when ousted President Aristide had flown into that CARICOM country a few weeks ago, had been criticised by the Americans. Trinidadians and Tobagonians and citizens of other CARICOM States may wish to read between the lines of Manning’s statement. History certainly will.

The Prime Minister advised that this country had committed troops as part of CARICOM’s peacekeeping force which would be part of a wider humanitatian (and military) intervention in Haiti. The United States, France and Canada already have peace-keeping troops in Haiti, sent in without even the courtesy, unlike in the case of Grenada, of reference to CARICOM, of which Haiti, as we pointed out earlier, is a Member State. Meanwhile, CARICOM has neither withdrawn nor modified its request to the United Nations to set up an independent body to investigate whether or not President Aristide was indeed forced to resign and sent into involuntary exile. It should not allow its request to die.