Most members of Taiwan's technical mission in Haiti have moved to the country's capital, Port-au-Prince, to avoid the increasingly violent opposition movement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
Apart from the mission leader and several aides, the members and their families have left the mission compound for the Haitian capital, said ministry spokesman Richard Shih (
So far the 46 ROC citizens and staff at Taiwan's embassy in Port-au-Prince have been unharmed, he said.
Shih said the government believed the conflict in Haiti "would not hurt the relationship between Taiwan and Haiti," one of Taiwan's 14 allies in Latin America.
The US, Canada and the Organization of American States are concerned about the situation in Haiti, Shih added.
He said that the fighting has not had much of an impact on most people's lives.
Michel Lu (呂慶龍), former Taiwanese ambassador to Haiti, said widespread poverty has deepened grudges against the Haitian president, Jean Bertrand Aristide.
"It won't be an easy thing to get the opposition movement under control," he said.
But Lu added strife is unlikely to affect the Taiwan-Haiti relationship.
"The US attitude will be crucial to Aristide's survival. The president does not have troops -- that's a big problem for him," Lu said.
Early last month, Aristide told Examination Yuan President Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文), President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) special envoy for the celebration of Haiti's 200th anniversary of independence from France, that he would continue to support Taiwan's bids to join international organizations.
Aristide told Yao he hoped Chen succeeds in his re-election campaign and that he would like to invite Chen to visit Haiti after the March election.
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