President Aristide's ouster places in stark relief the extreme dangers inherent in Caribbean nations permitting external powers to stoke and intensify whatever political divisions may exist within our small and precious democracies. Unless we become less trusting of others' efforts to help us "build democracy", unless we are willing to undertake the hard work and assume full responsibility for ensuring that our nations are indeed stable and that within our borders justice does indeed prevail, we will, sooner or later, find ourselves once again, in the words of President Thabo Mbeki, objects of pity, objects of ridicule.

I have long lamented the fact that too many African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) nationals allow "friends" in the United States, France, Canada and other industrialised nations to encourage us to overthrow our governments, massacre each other, destroy crucial public infrastructure, and bring our countries to a state of total and absolute chaos in order to register our displeasure with our elected officials. Tragically, we comply - never pausing to question why our "friends" never use the same methods to express their displeasure with their elected officials, no matter how great the provocation. In the United States, for example, Republicans think that President Clinton utterly defiled the presidency. Democrats insist that President Bush, without question, stole the 2000 presidential election. Yet, even the most ruthlessly ambitious American politicians always decide, as though it is by now etched onto their DNA, that the place to inflict the ultimate punishment, in their countries, is at the polls.

My most insistent message in the wake of President Aristide's ouster, therefore, has been that in an increasingly hostile, globalised environment, the governments and peoples of the Caribbean absolutely must learn to band together in defence of sacred and time-honoured principles - justice, equity, democracy. Failure to do so will leave our individual nations, as well as our Caricom family, woefully ill-equipped to withstand the multifaceted and never-ending subterfuge and machinations of the world's "leading democracies".

Prime Minister Patterson has announced that the Aristide family will, for the next several weeks be residing in Jamaica. In doing so, the prime minister has shown himself to be a leader of calm courage and steadfast principle. He is also demonstrating that not only do our nations have a proud, strong tradition of parliamentary democracy, we are also a people whose history have made us concerned about fairness, justice, and human decency.

In the United States, the most ruthless criminals are routinely given "a new chance at a new life", at taxpayer expense, under the US witness protection programme. How, then, can any American policymaker with even a smidgen of understanding of, or regard for, Caribbean people, in good conscience, pressure our governments to isolate the first democratically-elected, and recently-ousted, president of Haiti - a nation whose very existence holds such profound psychological significance in our slave-descended hearts?

Consider the irony of France and the United States having arranged the comfortable exile of Haiti's brutal military dictator, Jean Claude Duvalier in France, or the United States having arranging for Haiti's ruthless military coup leaders Cedras and Biamby to lead equally comfortable lives in Panama, while France, Canada and the United States now insist that Haiti's twice-elected, and recently ousted, president be proclaimed persona non grata within the Caribbean family.

President Aristide co-operated fully with Caricom as the latter attempted to forge a non-violent, constitutional solution to the Haitian crisis, for this is the Caribbean tradition. Haiti's so-called opposition stubbornly refused, year after year, to go to the polls, deeming a selected government more appropriate for the Haitian people than an elected one, thereby pushing Haiti into a vortex of instability which to this day has not abated.

And the people of the Caribbean are now supposed to close their hearts to the Aristide family?

I pray that in the months ahead, the people of Jamaica - and the wider Caribbean - will apply their considerable talents and precious energy to promoting and strengthening respect and civility across party lines; working for peace and justice within our islands and throughout the region; creating and revitalising opportunities for economic and political collaboration within and between our member states; ensuring that only elected governments be allowed to represent Caricom nations in multilateral institutions; sharing with the broader global community the importance of our values to a world of stability and peace.

We are a special people, with a special history. Let us move forward together, free of rancour and political opportunism, focused on meeting the practical exigencies of managing small-island economies, but ever mindful of importance of insight, wisdom and integrity to a safe and secure future for us all.

Hazel Ross-Robinson is a former foreign policy adviser in the US Congress and president of Ross-Robinson & Associates, a firm of foreign policy consultants. She is an adviser to President Aristide.hrr@rosro

Up close with Heineken Green Synergy finalists

Merritone looks to the future

Beenie Man arrives late for function to honour athletes; apologises