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Clinton Urges Haitian Leader to Resolve Election Crisis

   VOA News  January 30, 2011
   Secretary  of  State  Hillary  Clinton  boards her plane for a trip to
   Haiti at Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, DC, January 30,
   2011

Photo: AP

   Secretary  of  State  Hillary  Clinton  boards her plane for a trip to
   Haiti at Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, DC, January 30,
   2011

   U.S.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called on Haiti to act on
   recommendations  of  the Organization of American States to resolve an
   electoral crisis in the impoverished Caribbean nation.
   Clinton  was  speaking before leaving Washington Sunday on a flight to
   Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, where she plans to mediate the crisis
   by  holding  talks  with  outgoing  President  Rene  Preval  and three
   candidates vying to succeed him.
   OAS  monitors  have urged Preval's preferred candidate, Jude Celestin,
   to  withdraw  from a run-off presidential election scheduled for March
   20.  The  monitors  said  they  found  evidence of widespread fraud in
   Celestin's favor in preliminary results from the first-round of voting
   last November.
   Those results showed Celestin securing second place in the November 28
   ballot,  narrowly qualifying him for the run-off ahead of the apparent
   third-place  finisher,  popular  singer  Michel Martelly. The election
   front-runner, former Haitian first lady Mirlande Manigat, was in first
   place.
   The  publication  of the preliminary results last month triggered days
   of  violent protests by opposition supporters angered by what they saw
   as vote rigging by Haiti's government.
   Clinton  says Washington has no plans to suspend aid to Haiti as a way
   of pressuring it to resolve the crisis.
   Haiti's   ruling   party  has  urged  Celestin  to  pull  out  of  the
   presidential race, but he has not confirmed his exit. Haiti's election
   commission  has  said  it  will  publish final results of the disputed
   first round of voting on Wednesday.
   Haiti  is  struggling to recover from last year's earthquake that left
   more than 200,000 people dead and 1 million others homeless.
   Haiti  also  is also battling a cholera outbreak that has killed 4,000
   people  since  October. Clinton is due to visit a treatment center for
   cholera patients during her visit.

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