Thursday, October 19, 2006

BASSETERRE, St Kitts: St Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister and current Chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Dr Denzil Douglas, said the Prime Ministerial Mission to Haiti on Wednesday is aimed at consolidating that country’s re-entry into the integration movement and to assess its recent return to democracy following the election of President Rene Preval earlier this year.

Douglas, who will be accompanied by Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerritt; St Lucia’s Prime Minister Dr Kenny Anthony and CARICOM Secretary General, Dr Edwin Carrington, said his delegation will meet with the CARICOM Technical Mission that is currently in Port au Prince before holding a series of consultations with the Haitian leaders including President Preval, the Prime Minister, the Parliamentary officials and representatives of the private sector to ensure that Haiti as a member of the Caribbean Community benefits from all of the advantages in being a part of the family of nations.

“We want to ensure that the important institutions of Government in Haiti that are responsible for the discharge of good governance are in fact in place and functional,” said Douglas, who noted that CARICOM Heads of Government at their 27th Conference in St Kitts last July had identified specific areas of concern.

“We want to make sure that apart from democracy and that human rights be allowed to flourish and people’s rights are protected, we also want to ensure that the serious issue of sanitation and general public health conditions were being addressed. We would want to make sure that the basic structure – a network of roads that would be critically important in enhancing the development of agriculture and other important areas of economic development in Haiti are in place and also look at the prospects for tourism development in Haiti,” Douglas told a Press Briefing Tuesday night at the end of the 21st Meeting of the Bureau of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community.

Douglas noted that the international and regional donor community on its visit to Port au Prince, last August to look at how it can assist in the financing of development projects, Haiti indicated an interest in furthering its relationship with its CARICOM neighbours by the establishment of a campus of the University of the West Indies in the French-speaking nation.

“They felt very strongly that the University of the West Indies has been an instrument of integration and wanted to be a part of this institution to further embrace them within the integration movement,” said Douglas, who also pointed out that Haiti also want to have access to other campuses of the tertiary level institution.

Douglas said that CARICOM, which has closed its Mission in Haiti following the overthrow of then President Bertrand Aristide, would now explore the possibility of reopening the Mission now that the democratically-elected President Rene Preval “appears to be fully in place and to use the CARICOM Office to help to strengthen the various institutions in Haiti and to advance Haiti’s economic development.”

“We want to explore the possibilities of trade and that is why we are placing greater emphasis on our meeting on Wednesday with representatives of the private sector because Haiti needs to be able to trade with us,” he said.

The CARICOM chairman said there are issues of immigration that need to be addressed. “We must speak frankly on these issues because those issues involved the possibility of illegal trade and we want to make sure that we do not have those possibilities taking place within the Caribbean Community among members of the Community,” said Douglas.

He said CARICOM wants to work with the international donor community, as Haiti needs financial aid. “We intend to ensure that we are in a position to provide the necessary institutional support so that Haiti can access the aid that is there and which is absolutely necessary for its development thus allowing the people of Haiti to improve their standard of living,” said Douglas.

He said that the CARICOM Mission now in Haiti would also assess the possibility of technical assistance, the manpower and human resource that can come from CARICOM to assist Haiti in re-establishing its democracy.

The CARICOM Chairman said the Mission will also ensure that Haiti also benefits from the Trinidad and Tobago Petroleum Stabilisation Fund and the Petro-Caribe deal offered by Venezuela.

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