The military coup in Haiti by the United States and France, aided and supported by Canada did not come as a last minute decision to prevent a bloodbath. Rather, it was carefully planned more than a year in advance at a meeting held in Ottawa at the initiative of the Canadian government and at the insistence of the United States.

Major media reports on events in Haiti have variously reported the words of President Jean Bertrand Aristide that he has been removed from his elected office by military forces lead by the USA, that he was forced to sign a document indicating his voluntary resignation and that he was taken (kidnapped) against his will to the Central African Republic, where he is being held under guard.

This description of the course of events leading to Aristide's departure are being vehemently denied by Secretary of State Colin Powell and others in the US administration.

There is however evidence that the removal of President Aristide had been planned more than a year earlier at a meeting of officials from Canada, USA, France and some countries from Latin America, held in Ottawa, Canada and code named the "Ottawa Initiative on Haiti". An article about this meeting was published by Michel Vastel in the March 15, 2003 edition of the Canadian magazine "L'Actualit�" as reported on the internet publication "Haiti-Progres" (1). According to the report, Denis Paradis, Canada's Secretary of State for Latin America, Africa and the French-speaking World was particularly intent on bringing change to Haiti. "If Canadians treated their animals the way that Haitian authorities treat their citizens," he said, " they would be placed in prison." Note that both Canada and the USA had stopped providing international aid and loans to Haiti shortly after George W. Bush became president, an act which certainly aggravated the already desperate living conditions of Haiti's millions of poor. But according to Paradis, Haiti's internal problems are a threat to North American countries. "It's a time bomb," he says "which must be defused immediately".

Another article in Haiti-Progres is titled "Multi-Front Strategy Seeks to Oust Aristide Before 2004" and states "As the world's attention remains fixed on the looming war in Iraq, the U.S. and its local allies are carrying out a similar offensive against the government of Haiti with a goal of "regime change" before 2004, the bicentennial of Haitian independence and history's only successful slave revolution". It goes on to compare the plans for Haiti with the war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, i.e.: a regime change to put the rich minority and business interests back in charge of running the country. In the US, the same people who removed the Sandinistas from power in 1989 are in key positions in the Bush regime, people like Elliot Abrams, John Poindexter, John Negroponte, Otto Reich and Roger Noriega, all of whom played a role in the dirty war against Nicaragua.

The Ottawa Initiative on Haiti, which took place without the knowledge and participation of the Haitian government, covered its plans of aggression under the mantle of the Organization of American States and a United Nations clause on "the responsibility to protect a population that suffers from the consequences of a civil war, an insurrection, state repression or failure of its policies, and when the state in question is not willing or capable of putting an end to these sufferings or to avoid them, international responsibility to protect takes precedence over the principle of non-intervention". This clause, however well intended it may be, opens the door to mischief by greater powers to, when it suits them, support and foment opposition to a legitimate democratic government, cut aid and assistance and then, when thing go badly for the government, act to remove them from power. That is what appears to have taken place in Haiti. Having a democratically elected government appears to be no safeguard against foreign aggression. It once again reminds one of the infamous words of Henry Kissinger after the overthrow of the democratically elected government of President Allende in Chile:" I see no reason why a certain country should be allowed to 'go Marxist' merely because its people are irresponsible". Only now it not only applies to marxists anymore.

(1) www.haiti-progres.com

� Copyright 2003 by AxisofLogic.com

W. Vic Ratsma is a lifelong political activist. Now retired and living in Nova Scotia, Canada, he contributes articles and poetry in both English and Dutch to a number of progressive publications.