/EDITORS: Please relate to article moved earlier titled ‘HAITI- POLITICS: Terror Across the Border’’/

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Mar 12 (IPS) — The two-day visit which Haitian President Rene’ Preval began Tuesday to the Dominican Republic will enable him to relaunch relations between the two countries, handicapped for more than five years by diplomatic and political differences.

Diplomatic sources say that the decision to renew negotiations between the two countries only two months before the Dominican presidential elections is also linked to a tactical choice of the Haitian government, aimed at giving the leader of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), Jose’ Francisco Pena Gomez some elbow room.

So far opinion polls indicate Pena Gomez will secure a clear victory at the polls.

‘’We think it is better to take advantage of the opening made by President (Joaquin) Balageur to renew relations between the two countries. We have also chosen this opportunity in order not to make the situation more difficult under a government headed by Pena Gomez,’’ said one diplomatic source.

‘’It will be difficult for him to develop these relations because of the attacks from his political opponents, who consider him as being of Haitian origin, and consequently susceptible to being in favour of a Haitian invasion of the Dominican Republic,’’ he explained.

The Dominican government will insist in these negotiations on the question of trade relations between the two countries.

The Dominican government wants to regularise commercial relations in place of their present informal character, so as to permit better fiscal control over them, Edwin Paraison, Haitian Consul in Barahona, located in the south of the Dominican Republic, told IPS.

For more than 20 years, trade between the two countries has been to the advantage of the Dominican Republic, which exports some 50 million dollars worth of goods to Haiti annually.

One of the top priorities of the Haitian government is the question of respect for the rights of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic.

Preval will also be discussing with his Dominican colleague questions of national security, in direct relation to the presence in the Dominican Republic of numerous political opponents linked to those involved in the overthrow of ex-president Aristide in 1991.

The absence of Haitian security forces along the frontier between the two countries poses the problem of national security, according to the diplomat. At 18:00 hours local time Haitian National Police agents leave their posts, fearing for their own security.

‘’Two months ago, around two o’clock in the morning,’’ the diplomatic source confided, ‘’a large cargo, whose contents we do not know, was unloaded from a Dominican truck onto a Haitian one.’’

Paraison said the unloading took two hours. It occurred at the frontier of Malpasse in the south. He added that vehicles were being stolen from both sides of the border by gangs.

The Haitian government should make the most of this diplomatic opening despite the political undertones which it may have, referring to the former differences between the two countries in 1991. And the government should take Balaguer at his word by putting the emphasis on the development of bilateral relations.

Preval’s visit should go beyond a simple media event. ‘’If I had to find the right word to speak of relations between the two countries, I would say there is a positive spirit on the part of both governments to advance relations,’’ he said.

‘’The stubborn insistence on regularising trade relations should not make us forget certain other matters like human rights. Conditions are not entirely satisfactory in this field despite the evolution noted over the past few years.’’

At the beginning of March, in Santiago, for example, under the pretext of forcing the driver of a local bus carrying Haitians to come to a halt, Dominican soldiers opened fire, killing a child of 11 and wounding his mother with three shots.

Till now Haitian sugar cane cutters do not have individual work contracts. Living conditions on the plantations have not improved. Last year Haitian cutters were paid 25 pesos for a tonne of cane. They do not receive their pay in cash, but by a voucher which can be used to buy food and to have their clothes laundered.

The Haitian diplomatic mission is not in a position to supply figures on the number of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic. According to one diplomat accredited to the Dominican Republic, some 60,000 cane cutters are required at each harvest to keep the Dominican sugar industry working at full capacity.

Around 99 percent of the cane cutters are of Haitian origin. Close to 15,000 of their total number are seasonal workers who cross the frontier during the Zafra (harvest). At the end of the Zafra, the old Haitian workers, mostly illegal, move on towards the rice fields and other agricultural work.

One Haitian diplomatic source estimates at 500,000 the number of Haitians living in the country, but the Dominican authorities fix the figure at one million.

Edwin Paraison indicates that the Dominican government has so far not granted Dominican citizenship to nearly 100,000 persons who legally have the right to it.

The two government will also be examining the dossier of Lome’ IV, which provides for the financing of joint ventures between the two countries in the fields of health, tourism, the environment and infrastructures.

To facilitate exchanges between the two countnries the Haitian government may contemplate reducing the cost of a visa, one sources confided to IPS. A mixed Haitian-Dominican commission will soon have to be reactivated in order to study all aspects of relations between the two countries.

Haitian-Dominican relations have taken a new turn since Feb 27, after Balaguer presented his annual budget estimates before the Dominican National Assembly.

For the first time in the past five years, Balaguer extended the hand of friendship, describing the two neighbours – which share the island of Hispaniola – as Siamese twins.

Balaguer had also insisted on the obligatory political separation between the two countries, but he had placed emphasis on rapprochement which should take place in specific fields like health, education, environment and the regularisation of commercial relations. (END/IPS/imc/TT/96)

Origin: Amsterdam/HAITI-DOMINICAN REPUBLIC/ ----

[c] 1996, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS) All rights reserved

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