Ja: Latortue humbles

Haiti's interim prime minister, Gerard Latortue, has written to Prime Minister to P J Patterson saying he wants to send an ambassador back to Jamaica and expressing deep regret at the collapse of relations between Kingston and Port-au-Prince over the Aristide affair, regional sources said last night.

Neither Patterson nor the foreign minister, K D Knight, who is abroad, were immediately available for comment, and Knight's deputy, Delano Franklyn, said he had no knowledge of the correspondence. "I am not aware of it," Franklyn said.

But highly reliable sources close to the Haiti/Caribbean Community (Caricom) diplomatic impasse said that it would not be incorrect to characterise the Latortue communication as coming close "to an apology" as was likely to be achieved in the "arcane language and world" of diplomacy.

Patterson was "personally pleased with the tone and message" conveyed by the Latortue letter, said one regional source.

Lartortue had better to learn to understand the Caribbean mind. He's playing with men who have a very distinct sense of their own self-worth, and who come from a system that reinforces it. While I may not agree with Caricom's dithering and do-nothing attitude on Haiti, I recognize that Latortue has done much to irk Caricom's heads.

Rule of thumb: don't leave the U.S. thinking you have American backing and try to bring off on Caribbean boys. They pretty much told Latortue what to do with himself and the horse he rode in on; now that he has humbled himself before them, hopefully Caricom will act in relation to Haiti.