Weekly Report - 6 January 2004

Caricom has sent a top-level team of diplomats to Port-au-Prince to try to achieve what has eluded the OAS: a negotiated solution to the political crisis that has afflicted Haiti since 2000, and which has been escalating since last September. Protest demonstrations have continued since before Christmas with only two brief breathers, and attempts by police and government supporters to disperse them have claimed a reported 12 lives over that period.