[lbo-talk] Haiti: Insecurity Persists, Philippe "Offers Services"

[Michael Pugliese]

Steve Dudley, who has a new book I saw recommended in the back pgs. of the latest issue of Z on Columbia and FARC, and who has written for NACLA and Harpers, has this interesting aside at the end of a recent dispatch, "One of the stranger accounts comes from a prominent, normally well- informed Haitian businessman, an opponent of Aristide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. 

Late that Saturday night, the businessman says, the American, French and Canadian ambassadors visited Aristide to urge him to resign in what the businessman called an "ultimatum." 

Aristide then became so angry, he cursed Foley, the U.S. ambassador, and even tried to physically assault him but was restrained by U.S. Marines. 

The businessman says Marines then handcuffed Aristide and ushered him off to the Port-Au-Prince airport. 

In the storm of claims and counterclaims about affair, the businessman's account could not be independently corroborated. 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/07/MNGA45FUN91.DTL
Truth of Aristide's departure hidden in Haiti's chaos 
Amidst debate about U.S. role, only certainty is that he's gone