18916: Coha: Press Memorandum: Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Must Lead on Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: coha@coha.org



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                            Council On Hemispheric Affairs



      Monitoring Political, Economic and Diplomatic Issues Affecting the Western
                                      Hemisphere



                            Memorandum to the Press 04.10


                              Friday, February 20, 2004









Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister must Lead as well as follow on Haiti

 *  Bill Graham’s recent remarks yesterday on Haiti indicates that he is
    depending upon U.S. policymakers to orient Canada while not having a clue
    as to what is really happening there.





Foreign Minister Graham is outdoing even his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of
State Powell, who he is otherwise closely aping, in subscribing to a confused
and tough, if not hostile line towards Haiti’s President Aristide.  In doing
so, he seriously distorts reality.  In following such a surprisingly one-sided
and prejudicial approach on the cause of the conflict there, Graham is in
danger of rendering Canada irrelevant to any eventual solution on the
crisis-ridden island.  In contrast to French diplomacy, which at least is
exhibiting some spunk and creativity on the issue, Mr. Graham is dragging
Canada back to its tradition roost of me-toism when it comes to U.S.-sponsored
initiatives.  The Foreign Affairs Minister would be well served if he recalled
the independent regional policy that was engaged in by two of his predecessors,
Joe Clark and, in particular, Loyd Axworthy, which brought Canada great lustre
when they held office.



The tone and language which the Canadian Foreign Minister has been using in
recent days regarding the current situation in Haiti is very unfortunate. 
Graham argues that Aristide must live up to “his obligations,” suggesting that
the Haitian president hasn’t.  In fact Aristide has accepted every condition
pressed upon him by CARICOM, the U.S. and the OAS.  The bedrock problem
regarding Haiti is that the country’s opposition refuses to negotiate with
Aristide and will not consider taking up their seat on the Provisional
Electoral Council, without which no elections can be held.  How can a new prime
minister be jointly appointed by the opposition and the government, when the
former refuses to participate in the process?  While Graham recognizes that
“Obviously, we can’t allow this [the violence] to continue to develop…” it is
equally obvious that the Haitian government is attempting to pacify the country
through repeated offers of negotiation and conciliation.  Meanwhile the
opposition---now increasingly controlled by the discredited former members of
the country’s brutal military and paramilitary forces that terrorized the
country from 1991-94, has obdurately refused in any way to join in a process of
reconciliation.  Pacification has failed to occur up to now because at the root
of the opposition’s strategy is the need to create the very chaos that Mr.
Graham somehow appears to attribute to Aristide, the peacemaker, rather than
the country’s increasingly violent opposition.  There is where Mr. Graham’s
outrage appropriately belongs.



One could also add the thought that if Canada and the U.S. had done a more
effective job in carrying out their responsibility to professionalize the
Haitian police force and establish a reliable court system, maybe the island’s
security authorities would have been able to have done a better job in
upholding a system of law and order after the U.S.-led intervention in 1994,
which was aimed at overthrowing the military and FRAPH.





  Issued 20 February 2004

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