ST GEORGE'S, Grenada - Caribbean Community leaders will today announce their conditionalities for the re-admittance of Haiti to the council of the Community, Caricom's chairman Dr Keith Mitchell said last night.

But there were suggestions that while the document will insist that the interim administration of Gerard Latortue show progress towards a return to democracy, the document will leave enough room for an accommodation with Port-au-Prince.

"We are moving in the direction of a resolution and a statement to be approved tomorrow by all leaders would speak for itself," Mitchell, the Grenadian prime minister, told reporters.

Haiti's chair at Caricom's meetings has remained vacant since February when President Jean-Bertrand Aristide left the country in what he claimed to have been a US-orchestrated kidnapping, which the Americans vehemently deny.

The Community had up to now also declined to recognise Haiti's interim government headed by Latortue, who quarrelled with regional leaders over their support of Aristide.
But Mitchell indicated that sufficient progress was being made in Haiti for there now to be a "consensus statement" allowing the French-speaking country back into Caricom.

A Caricom ministerial team is expected to travel to Haiti within a month to assess the situation and report back to the Heads of Government, according to informed ministerial sources.

The conditionalities to be laid down by the heads of government will likely include:

. an early return to a constitutional government;

. the establishment of a bi-partisan electoral council for competitive local, national and presidential elections; and

. the disarming of armed bands.

According to one regional leader, the statement will represent a shift from previous positions by those who held "a more firm line on conditionalities and those in the mood for accommodation, but without sacrificing our collective principled position as a Community".

The draft statement for approval by Heads of Government was being prepared by Assistant Secretary-General of the Community Secretariat Colin Granderson, who has special responsibility for Haiti.

Earlier in the day, the Community leaders had spent about six hours in closed-door deliberations on the privately-owned island of Calivigny where they made "good progress" on other important issues, including the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) and the Caribbean Single Market and Economy, according to chairman Mitchell.

Among the agreements were:

. The leaders endorsed a recommendation from the Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission on the first president of the court, which is to be formally launched in November, but the person was not being named. However, speculation was that it will be Chief Justice of Trinidad and Tobago, Michael de La Bastide.

. Barbados Prime Minister Owen Arthur, who has lead responsibility for moving Caricom into the Caribbean Single Market and Economy, is to host a special summit, possibly in August, to focus exclusively on what needs to be done to realise the CSME's single market component by year-end.

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