Powell to visit Haiti Monday
Saturday, April 3, 2004
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AFP): US Secretary of
State Colin Powell will visit Haiti next week, his spokesman announced on
Friday on the sidelines of a visit by Powell to Brussels.
"Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will visit Haiti on Monday April 5, 2004
to meet with representatives of Haiti's interim government," his spokesman
Richard Boucher said. "He will also observe
first-hand United States and international efforts to bring stability to the
country and address the humanitarian needs of the Haitian people," Boucher
said. Powell is expected to arrive in
Port-au-Prince on Monday morning and leave the Haitian capital on the same
day. The visit will be Powell's first to
Haiti since he became secretary of state in January 2001.
Haiti's ousted president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has lodged a lawsuit in
Paris claiming coercion involving French and US officials forced him from
power. It designates the defendant as persons
unknown but specifically mentions the French and US ambassadors in Haiti,
Thierry Burkard and James Foley, as well as a French writer, Regis Debray, and
the sister of then French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin, Veronique
Albanel, in the deposition. Debray and
Albanel were special French envoys sent to Haiti last year to discuss ways to
calm roiling political tensions in the country stemming from 2000 legislative
elections widely seen as fraudulent.
Aristide's lawyer, Gilbert Collard, has said Aristide's US lawyers were to
undertake similar action in the United States, but did not elaborate.
France's foreign ministry has said that Aristide signed a formal resignation
letter that opened the way to a new administration being set up in Haiti.
But Collard said the resignation -- made "at night, while in the hands of
armed soldiers" -- was unconstitutional and therefore invalid.
De Villepin cancelled a visit to Haiti planned for this week following local
elections in France. He now heads the French interior ministry.
Aristide arrived in Jamaica on March 15 from the Central African Republic,
where he had been staying since he left Haiti on February 29, in the midst of
an armed uprising. He was expected to spend
10 weeks in Jamaica, but his presence so close to his still unstable country
has raised fears that his supporters might be tempted to mount a
counter-attack. Some 3,350 Canadian, Chilean,
French and US military are participating in a multinational force in Haiti to
help restore order in a crisis that grew into an opposition rebellion in
February, followed by Aristide's departure.
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