Jamaica's junior foreign minister, Delano Franklyn, greets Mildred Aristide while her husband, deposed Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, deplanes at the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston yesterday. The Aristides arrived in the island from the Central African Republic for a 10-week stay. (Photo: Joseph Wellington)

JEAN-BERTRAND Aristide, deposed as Haiti's president and transported to the Central African Republic, yesterday returned from exile for a controversial stay in Jamaica that has triggered a diplomatic and political row with Haiti's interim leader who announced a freezing of relations with the regional trade and political bloc, the Caribbean Community (Caricom).

Gerard Latortue, who has claimed that Aristide's presence in nearby Jamaica could be destablising to Haiti, also announced from Port-au-Prince that he had withdrawn Haiti's ambassador to Jamaica, Jean Gabriel Augustine. But last night the foreign ministry said it had received no notification from Haiti.

In any event, the ministry said, there was no ambassador to recall. He left Jamaica last week.

"The ministry is aware that the interim government had recalled its heads of missions overseas for consultations," the foreign ministry statement said. "In this regard, the Haitian ambassador to Jamaica departed Kingston late last week."

Robinson. accompanied Aristide to Jamaica

At the same time, the US Marines sent to Haiti to help restore order after Aristide's overthrow, had their first casualty. One was shot in the arm while patrolling a pro-Aristide stronghold in Port-au-Prince. The wound was not life-threatening.

Aristide has insisted that he was virtually kidnapped and bundled out of Haiti by US forces in a coup d'etat backed by France, but the Americans say that all they did was to give Aristide safe passage and transportation out of the country in the face of an impending rebel assault on the Haitian capital.

He resigned on his on free will, the Americans say.

The 15-member Caricom, which had spearheaded an initiative which would have kept Aristide in office but sharing power with the formal opposition, called for an international investigation of his removal. Haiti joined the bloc in 1998, ending decades of isolation in the Caribbean.

Last week Prime Minister P J Patterson announced that Jamaica, in a move backed by its Caricom partners, would allow Aristide and his wife, Mildred, to stay in the island for up to 10 weeks to reunite with their young children - a decision that has peeved not only Latortue but the Bush administration whose national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, described it as "a bad idea".

But yesterday the Aristides, after a 17-hour flight aboard a chartered Gulfstream jet, arrived at Kingston's Norman Manley airport where they were greeted by deputy foreign minister, Delano Franklyn. They were flown by Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) helicopter to a sprawling ranch-style bungalow at Lydford, St Ann, which is sometimes used as a weekend retreat by Patterson and other government ministers.

They were accompanied by Sharon Hay-Webster, the South Central St Catherine MP who was Patterson's personal emissary; US Congresswoman, Maxine Waters; and the writer and black activist, Randall Robinson.

Reporters, except two travelling with him, were kept far away from Aristide and he made no statement to the press.

But according to the foreign ministry, in a planeside address, Aristide thanked Jamaica for hosting him and expressed his appreciation to Caricom for their support.

Police and soldiers combed the area around the tarmac, and the airport generally, for the 25 minutes that the Aristides were on the ground.

Before Aristide left the Central African Republic Sunday night (Jamaica time) there appeared to have been intense negotiations with the country's president, Gen Francois Bozize, over whether he would be allowed to leave.

Hay-Webster said on radio last night that Bozize wanted to check the authority of the mission to remove Aristide and with those with whom he had negotiated for the ousted president's presence in the Central African Republic.

"He wanted to speak with his local leadership and speak with those within the continent who he had had to liaise with in respect to president Aristide's presence," she said in a Power 106 FM interview.

Latortue, however, would have preferred Aristide to stay in Africa and on the weekend branded Jamaica's decision to host him as an "unfriendly act". He also dropped a planned visit to Jamaica to lobby Patterson, ahead of a Caricom summit later in the month, for the Community's recognition of his interim government.

Latortue deepened the rift yesterday with his declaration about withdrawing Haiti's ambassador from Jamaica and putting "to sleep all participation in the activity of Caricom".

"Caricom has hurt this country too much in the past, even when they were breaking Haitians' bones, when they were violating human rights," Latortue said.

In an interview with Amy Goodman, the host of the Democracy Now programme who had also travelled with Aristide, Congresswoman Waters described Latortue's statement as "meaningless".

"This is another effort directed at trying to make this government more legitimate," Waters said. "But the fact of the matter is that Aristide was democratically elected by the people and this new government wasn't."

Mothers can't father

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'