Aristide ‘mobster’: Wikileaks cable

The top foreign policy advisor to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva described former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide as “a mobster.”

Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo on Friday quoted a document written by Dennis W Hearne, the current US consul in Rio de Janeiro, who was at the time political advisor to the US embassy in Brasilia.

According to the document, made public by the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks, Brazilian presidential advisor Marco Aurelio Garcia claimed in 2005 that Aristide “orders assassinations by cell phone.”

Aristide is currently hoping to return to Haiti from his exile in South Africa, although he has no passport and cannot return for now.

Garcia visited Haiti in 2005 and met with representatives of the local elite and with United Nations officials in the country. His visit was meant to brace Brazilian plans for the return of Aristide, who was ousted in 2004.

Before the visit, Brazilian officials believed that Aristide was “a political reality that might have to be considered as a factor in political dialogues,” the document says.

However, informal contacts in Port-au-Prince led Garcia to give up on the idea. Upon his return from Haiti, the advisor described Aristide as “a shadow over the country” that should be “exorcised.” The Brazilian official held the view that he must not be allowed back into Haitian politics under any circumstances, the document says. -

Sapa-dpa

http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/aristide-mobster-wikileaks-cable-1.1015405