Haitian authorities set dates for elections
Port au Prince, Haiti, Feb 1 (Prensa Latina) Local and national elections will be held in October and November this year, Haitian authorities informed on Monday.
According to a Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) report, local elections are scheduled for October 9, while Presidential elections will be contested on November 13. Prime Minister Gerard Latortue is expected to approve the schedule later this week.
The elected officials will take up office in January and February 2006, and will replace the US backed interim administration headed by Prime Minister Latortue, which was installed after the controversial departure of then President Jean Bertrand Aristide on February 29 last year.
Members of ousted President Jean Bertrand Aristide"s Lavalas Family party have already indicated they will participate only if the interim government ends what they call the arbitrary arrest of Aristide supporters.
To date, 91 political parties have already registered with the government, and United Nations elections officer Gerardo Le Chavellier said close to 100 candidates will contest the presidential elections.
Supporters of the ousted leader continue to demand his return to office, and political violence in Aristide strongholds has resulted in the deaths of over 250 people over the past four months.
(From Prensa Latina)
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NICARAGUA-US Military Honeymoon Faces Obstacle
Managua, Feb 1 (Prensa Latina) The confiscation of a portable antiaircraft missile (SAM-7) in hands of two civilians in Managua, Nicaragua, seems to become the apple of discord with the US.
The two countries were apparently engaged in a sweet military honeymoon whose climax was the sending of Nicaraguan troops to Iraq to back the US occupation. However, that seems to reach an end.
Although local army officers stated the weapon confiscated at a Managua cooling repair shop was excluded from its stocks, Washington immediately accused the Armed Forces of connections with alleged arm dealing.
The White House distrust of Nicaragua was disclosed on The Washington Times editorial saying the US State Department believed the rocket belonged to the Nicaraguan Army.
It led to an official communiqué by North American Embassy Counselor to Managua Peter Brennan, who told press, "we are very concerned about the SAM-7 issue. If a country is not at war and possess them, they may end in dangerous hands, that is why the best is to destroy them."
Brennan´s assessments revealed the true Washington intentions: capitalize on the situation to strip Nicaragua of its entire antiaircraft rocket arsenal.
In 2004, White House pressures forced the administration of President Enrique Bolaños to demolish 1,000 SAM-7 missiles belonging to the army, which promised to eliminate the rest in 2005.
The National Assembly led by opposition Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and the Constitutional Liberal Party members considered the governmental position a sovereignty violation, and decided to approve the Weapon Law that deprives the president of the power to destroy weapons.
It should be recalled it was the US Central Intelligence Agency that provided the counterrevolutionary bands with SAM-7 missiles to fight the FSLN government during the 1980s.
The former Soviet Union-made rockets went to the hands of the army when the so-called Nicaraguan Resistance laid down arms in the early 1990s.
Nicaraguan political circles believe the US has used the situation to criticize the Weapon Law and discredit the armed forces, whose highest top officers belong to the Sandinistas.
As presidential elections approach and the FSLN possibilities to return to power increase, the US has decided to break the honeymoon period, experts contended.
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