M & C News

Wash­ing­ton — The head of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) on Mon­day described this week’s con­fer­ence on Haiti’s recov­ery from January’s earth­quake as a chance to ‘define a strat­egy of sol­i­dar­ity’ with the Caribbean country.

The Con­fer­ence on the Future of Haiti is set to start Tues­day in the Domini­can Repub­lic, which shares the island of His­pan­iola with Haiti.

‘The path to devel­op­ment for the Caribbean nation can­not wait, so I hope the sum­mit in Punta Cana allows us to define a strat­egy of sol­i­dar­ity with this coun­try, which will solve the tim­ing and the polit­i­cal and tech­ni­cal issues of inter­na­tional aid,’ said OAS Sec­re­tary Gen­eral Jose Miguel Insulza.

Haiti, which has long been the poor­est coun­try in the Amer­i­cas, was rav­aged by a major earth­quake on Jan­u­ary 12.

Insulza said there is an ‘urgent’ need to ful­fil inter­na­tional com­mit­ments for the recon­struc­tion of Haiti and for strength­en­ing its demo­c­ra­tic system.

The two-day con­fer­ence has been called by the gov­ern­ments of the Domini­can Repub­lic, Haiti and Spain, in its capac­ity as the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Union. It is intended as evi­dence of the inter­est that the Amer­i­cas and Europe have in Haiti’s future.

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/americas/news/article_1559814.php/OAS-Conference-on-Haiti-s-future-seeks-to-define-strategy