From 15-16 September 2000, Assistant Secretary General Einaudi made a 24-hour consultation visit to Haiti, during which he met with President Préval, with Foreign Minister Longchamp and with the Head of La Fanmi Lavalas, former President Aristide. Convinced by those conversations that these authorities were prepared to show some flexibility on a number of the points of interest to a dialogue, the Assistant Secretary General returned to Haiti from September 21-29, 2000. On that occasion, President Preval made a strong television statement welcoming the presence of the OAS, calling for dialogue among the political parties, and pledging to implement the results of such a dialogue.
During this visit, the Assistant Secretary General met with a wide variety of Haitians, parties, and members of civil society. In hopes of generating an accord, he concentrated on the political parties and in particular on La Fanmi Lavalas and the major grouping of opposition parties, the Convergence Démocratique. For a week he met alternately with the Convergence and Lavalas leaderships. In many of these meetings, the Assistant Secretary General was accompanied by the special representatives of CARICOM (former Minister Charles Maynard of Dominica), of the United Nations Secretary General (Ambassador Alfredo Cabral), of the governments of Canada and of the United States (Ambassadors David Lee and Donald Steinberg respectively), as well as by Ambassadors of OAS member and observer states and by the Director of the Office of the OAS General Secretariat in Haiti, Ambassador Denneth Modeste. Click here for US election of Nov 7 2000.Or click Here for the Haitian election Dan pouri we pa-l sou ban-nan mi |
