Caricom
awaits Haiti's return
By
Rickey Singh
The
Trinidad Express
Port
Spain
Petroleumworld.com 02 11 06
THE
CARIBBEAN Community was last night waiting to re-admit Haiti to
its councils, as soon as possible, on the basis of "significant"
still unofficial results of Tuesday's presidential and parliamentary
elections.
Reports
reaching the Community's leaders from Port-au-Prince while they
were still in a final plenary session last evening of their 17th
Inter-Sessional Meeting at the Hilton Trinidad, indicated that
ex-President Rene Preval seemed set to emerge as the victorious
presidential candidate.
Preval,
who was reported as having a convincing lead in some seven of
the ten electoral departments, including the heavily populated
capital of Port-of-Prince and environs, happens to be the Haitian
President that led his country into membership of Caricom about
nine years ago at a Heads of Government Summit in Kingston, Jamaica.
Once
the official results confirm his undisputed victory, Preval is
expected to be invited to participate as Haiti's newly-inaugurated
Head of State at the fothcoming regular annual Caricom Summit
scheduled for July in Basseterre, St Kitts, ministerial sources
said at the Hilton Inter-Sessional.
From
the outset of its suspension from participating in the business
of the councils of the Community two years ago, following the
forcible ousting from power two years ago of President Jean Bertrand
Aristide, Caricom's official position has been that Haiti could
rightfully occupy its seat in the 15-member Community once a legitimate
government is in place on the basis of supervised free and fair
elections.
Caricom
had a six-member component on the international monitoring mission
that observed the February 7 elections for which there was a surprising
high level of voter response by Haitians in most of the electoral
departments.
Conference
sources said that the Community leaders worked through lunch in
an extended caucus session to complete their prioritised agenda
before moving into a final plenary session later that was expected
to run into the evening before they adjourn until they meet again
for their scheduled summit in St Kitts.
Issues
dealt with yesterday included the involvement of Caricom states
(other than Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago) in the Venezuela-initiated
PetroCaribe project .
The
Trinidad Express
Saturday,
February 11th 2006
Copyright © 2006
The
Trinidad Express.
All rights reserved
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