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| Haiti seeks reparations for colonial rule -- right down to the last cent
PARIS, Oct 8 (AFP) - The Haitian government has presented France with a bill for the precise sum of 21,685,155,571 US dollars and 48 cents as reparation for the suffering caused in the Caribbean nation during the colonial period, the foreign ministry in Paris confirmed Wednesday. The figure was reached by an unknown method of calculation as the modern-day equivalent of 90 million gold francs that were paid out in 1825 to King Charles X of France, as compensation for French settlers who had been expropriated by the newly-independent republic. Serious business, investment and technology intelligence for a serious advantage - BizVantage! Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide first made the demand in April -- on the bicentenary of the death of independence hero Toussaint Louverture in a French jail -- and the cry has since been taken up in proclamations on state-controlled media and street banners. However opposition figures in the impoverished Caribbean republic have distanced themselves from the move, accusing Aristide of seeking a populist diversion from pressing political and economic problems which are closer to home. On January 1, 2004 Haiti celebrates 200 years since its army of black slaves and freemen defeated an expeditionary force sent by Napoleon to crush the rebellion there, becoming the second nation in the western hemisphere after the United States to gain independence. The territory -- made up of the mountainous western part of the island of Hispaniola -- had been ceded to France by Spain in 1697, and during the colonial period it became one of the world's biggest coffee and sugar producers. After independence the white population was expelled. The French foreign ministry did not say how it intended to respond to Aristide's demand, but on Tuesday a spokesman announced the establishment of a "committee of reflexion" to report in January on ways of encouraging political and economic development in Haiti. The country has been increasingly unstable since 2000 elections which returned Aristide for a second term after he left office in 1996. Opposition parties say the vote was rigged, and foreign donors froze 500 million dollars in promised aid. In June President Jacques Chirac gave a warning to Aristide not to endanger relations with France. Referring to the reparations claim, he said: "Before bringing up contentious issue like this, I cannot advise too warmly the Haitian authorities to take care over the nature of their actions and their regime." Opposition figures in Haiti, including many writers and artists, have condemned what they say are Aristide's plans to turn the independence celebrations into "a propaganda campaign aimed at legitimising a power that was usurped and is recognised today as despotic and totalitarian," the French daily Le Monde reported. A Catholic priest with a devoted following in the slums of the capital Port-au-Prince, Aristide was elected president in 1990 but overthrown in a bloody coup d'etat a year later. After three years in exile he was restored thanks to an invasion by US troops. Le Monde newspaper quoted a joke doing the rounds of the opposition in Port-au-Prince a propos of the unlikely exactness of the compensation demand: "Paris finally agrees to the request but suggests the 48 cents be knocked off in order to arrive at a simpler figure. Certainly not, says Aristide. Otherwise what would be left for the people?" hs/ds France-Haiti
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