Haiti’s ousted leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide is to set up permanent home in South Africa, Jamaican officials said on Thursday.
He would not go there until after the general election next month, because President Thabo Mbeki’s government believed it would be ”politically unsettling”, they added. He would remain in Jamaica in the meantime.
Diplomatic sources in South Africa confirmed the asylum arrangement on Thursday. Aristide may leave for South Africa after the April 14 general elections, the sources said, asking not be named.
Earlier this month the South African government said it would consider a request from Aristide for asylum but had not received one.
Aristide arrived in Jamaica on March 14 to protests from the United States and Haiti’s new interim government, which said his presence on the island exacerbated the tension while a multinational peacekeeping force was trying to stabilise Haiti.
Aristide fled his country last month after a three-week uprising.
Haiti’s first freely elected president, he claims that he was forced out of power by the United States.
But US officials said they had acted at his request and probably saved his life when they put him on a plane to the Central African Republic.
Jamaican officials speaking in Basseterre, St Kitts, said Aristide would not be taking up offers of permanent sanctuary from Venezuela or of temporary asylum in Nigeria.
A summit of Caribbean leaders which began in St Kitts on Thursday criticised the US role in Aristide’s departure.
It will discuss his plans for permanent asylum during the two days of talks. – Guardian Unlimited Â