The 15 nations of the Caribbean Community withheld recognition from Haiti's US-backed interim government yesterday as leaders closed a summit renewing calls for a UN investigation into the ouster of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Leaders said their minds were made up that for now Haiti's interim government would not get official recognition from their regional bloc.
"Right now we are not satisfied," St. Vincent Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said at the close of the two-day summit. "We are going to watch and see a number of things as they evolve."
The leaders issued a statement early yesterday saying "no action should be taken to legitimize the rebel forces."
They lamented interim Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue's recent statements hailing rebels as "freedom fighters" and saying he was freezing Haiti's participation in the regional bloc because of its stance on bringing Aristide to Jamaica for temporary exile.
"These developments have not made it possible to receive the interim administration in the councils of the community," the leaders said.
They said while Haiti remains a "welcome partner" in the Caribbean Community, "there has been an interruption of the democratic process."
The leaders said they would ask the UN General Assembly or Secretary-General Kofi Annan to oversee an investigation into Aristide's claims that he was abducted at gunpoint by US agents when he left Feb. 29 as rebels threatened to attack Haiti's capital.
The 11 leaders in attendance said it is in the international community's "compelling interest" to fully investigate the circumstances of Aristide's departure.
US officials say they organized his departure on a charter to the Central African Republic at his own request and probably saved his life by escorting him away.
The Caribbean Community stressed "the importance of holding free and fair elections to ensure a return to constitutional democracy in an acceptable time frame."
Latortue has said he hopes to organize legislative elections in six to eight months; it was unclear whether that would be acceptable.
St. Kitts Prime Minister Denzil Douglas said the community plans to deal directly with "the Haitian people" through the UN and other agencies.
Leaders said they would take up the issue of whether to recognize the government again at a summit in July in Grenada.
"We can't determine this issue at this meeting," Trinidad Prime Minister Patrick Manning said as he left. He added that discussions were "quite tense."
Several officials said leaders were under enormous US pressure to recognize the new government.
Delegates said the 15-nation bloc wants the General Assembly to investigate Aristide's departure rather than the Security Council, where the US or France could veto the proposal.
Caribbean leaders declined to participate in the current US-led international force, incensed that the Security Council refused their urgent plea to send troops in time to save Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected leader.
Nevertheless, Manning said Trinidad will send 121 soldiers to join a separate UN humanitarian force in about two months. Other Caribbean countries are expected to follow.
In Haiti, meanwhile, the interim government announced it will block dozens of ex-members of Aristide's government from leaving the country, including former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.