UN General Assembly
2004

international community to respond to the rapidly deteriorating situation in Haiti. The draft resolution presented by CARICOM to the Security Council was noted but politely ignored. The rest is history. The Government and people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are anxious to help the Haitian people in the sorry plight in which they currently find themselves. But before engaging politically with the so-called interim Government of Haiti, we must see, among other things, unequivocal evidence on the ground of advances in democracy and freedom and credible guarantees of free and fair elections within a reasonable time. A regime that tries an indicted murderer at midnight, one who was hailed by the very regime as a liberator, and then frees him before the first cock crows, has failed the most elemental tests of justice, freedom and democracy. The death and destruction occasioned by Hurricane Jean in Haiti demand our humanitarian assistance, not our political engagement with the Haitian regime. The dire situation in the Darfur region of Sudan has caused great distress to the Government and people