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

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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

@ February 21, 2004