Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
Bridgetown, Barbados
June 3, 2002
QUESTION: …twenty missions in Haiti, all of them failed? So what is your… excuse me, so what is your (inaudible)?
SECRETARY POWELL: It is not the missions that have failed. It is the political leaders in Haiti who have failed. And the political leaders in Haiti must take the ultimate responsibility for resolving the political crisis that keeps the international community from providing the kind of help that the Haitian people deserve. And so we hope now that once again the OAS will be able to use its good offices to help bring a political solution to Haiti. But it’s not the failure of the missions; it’s the failure of the parties in Haiti who should be desperately searching for a solution to help their people. Meanwhile, the United States will continue to provide quite a bit of aid to the people of Haiti. It’s been over $300 million in the last several years, $73 million last year; it’s going to be $20 million this year, and a total of about a $100 million contribution to the people of Haiti in this two-year period upcoming. So we are doing everything we can to give hope to the people of Haiti, political hope to the OAS delegation, but also financial assistance. But Haiti needs more than that. It needs the assistance of the international financial community, the international financial institutions; but it is difficult to provide that kind of aid until there is political stability so that the money will be invested in a proper way in a country that has political stability and a government that is functioning. Without that, it is difficult to persuade, and it seems to us to be not the smartest thing in the world to do to send money into that kind of unstable political
environment. Thank you.