CARICOM leaders to hold emergency summit on Haiti

Tuesday, March 2, 2004

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AFP): Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders will hold an emergency meeting in Jamaica Tuesday to discuss how the region could help bring to stability to Haiti following Jean Bertrand Aristide's fleeing into exile, Guyana's Foreign Minister, Rudy Insanally, said Sunday.

"The focus will be on Haiti and what Caricom does at this stage," Insanally told reporters.

Current CARICOM Chairman, Jamaican Prime Minister Percival Patterson called regional leaders to his island nation for Tuesday's meeting, several hours after Aristide resigned and flew into exile to a yet unknown country.

Noting that the 15-nation CARICOM has a "prominent role," he said the CARICOM Plan, which included power-sharing with the political opposition, would be among the matters that regional leaders would discuss at their one-day summit.

Trinidad Foreign Affairs Minister Knowlson Gift said Monday that President Jean Bertrand Aristide's decision to leave Haiti came as a shock to CARICOM.

Aristide "had a very critical decision to make very quickly, and it came as a surprise to CARICOM," Gift told reporters.

CARICOM leaders on Tuesday will discuss sending peacekeeping troops and dealing with refugees.

Trinidad Prime Minister Patrick Manning said that troops from Trinidad are on standby to go to Haiti if called to do so.

But Manning stressed CARICOM did its best to bring about normalcy in the troubled Caribbean nation.

"I am proud of the role we played," he told reporters at his Whitehall Offices.

Manning also said regional leaders will decide what part the 15-member CARICOM will play in a post-Aristide Haiti.

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