It is hardly material whether President Aristide was literally forced out of Haiti at gunpoint by US forces or whether he asked for safe haven on the way to the airport.

The fact remains that what took place in Haiti was a coup d'etat. No amount of parsing, clause analysis or fancy-speak will change that fact.

It is also a fact this was a coup that carried the imprimatur of the United States, Canada and France.

They made it possible when they spurned the initiative by the Caribbean Community that would have allowed Mr Aristide - the democratically-elected president of Haiti - to complete the remaining two years of his term, but share power with the formal Opposition while the environment was created for new elections.

Rather than insist that the Opposition embrace this plan, they preferred instead to place pressure on Mr Aristide to resign in the face of political unrest and an armed uprising led by some very unsavoury characters. To insist that Mr Aristide, in the circumstances, left of his own free will, is nothing short of a farce. An ugly one at that.

What the Western troika did by leaving Mr Aristide to hang with little support, except from those with little power with which to come to his assistance, was to give the democratic system a good, hard and painful kick in the teeth. And they have signalled to the Haitian political process that violence and anarchy and mayhem and murder are the best, and easiest routes to success.

The problem for the Americans and their supporters in this adventure, is that having found it easier to abort principle in favour of ideology and opportunism, they will find that restoring stability to Haiti is a rather more difficult prospect. Indeed, democracy in Haiti now rests on something far more fragile than a hanging chad.

Which, sensibly, was what Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders had sought to avoid with their carefully crafted Kingston Accord to which Mr Aristide signed on at the end of January.

They understood that it was important for Haiti to climb out of this virtual cycle of instability and coups and to engineer a political process based on dialogue, negotiation and consensus rather than intransigence.

In the circumstance, we would agree with Mr Patterson that what the US-led group claims is its intention to implement in Haiti could hardly be the Caricom initiative. In fact, Caribbean leaders, who are in charge of small, vulnerable states, have good cause for concern that this coup against Mr Aristide, covered by the skimpiest of constitutional loin cloths, sets a dangerous precedent for democracies everywhere. Especially fragile ones.

Caricom leaders have, therefore, to be extremely circumspect about how they address the Haitian question at their summit today.

They must be clear that the community will not reward the extra-constitutional overthrow of elected leaders. So Caricom ought not to contribute any troops to the American-led military mission on Haiti.

The region must also find the mechanism to suspend Haiti from its Caricom membership and set a series of tasks, relative to the return of the democratic process, to be accomplished within a specific time-frame, if it wants to sit again at the regional table.

The community must also take to the Organisation of American States and the United Nations General Assembly - where it will not be subject to the whims of a powerful few - a resolution condemning the coup d'etat against Mr Aristide and seeking a declaration for the restoration of a democratic process in Haiti.

The fear factor

Feeding the multitude

DANGEROUS PETS