Aristide in pre-poll return to Haiti

HAITI'S former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was last night preparing to leave exile in South Africa within just a few hours, despite US president Barack Obama's bid to keep the hugely popular but controversial figure away from his homeland until it holds its presidential election this weekend.

"We can't hold him hostage if he wants to go," South African cabinet minister Collins Chabane said yesterday, noting that Haiti's government had delivered Mr Aristide's diplomatic passport last month.

South African officials said Mr Aristide was due to leave from a small airport on the outskirts of Johannesburg.

The former slum priest was twice president of Haiti and remains wildly popular among the Caribbean nation's poor. He was unable to serve full terms, having been ousted the first time in a coup before being restored to power in a US military intervention in 1994. After handing power to his successor, he was re-elected years later, only to flee a rebellion in 2004 aboard a US plane. He claimed he was kidnapped, a charge the US denied.

Mr Obama was concerned enough about the timing of Mr Aristide's return to call South African president Jacob Zuma on Tuesday, US National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said last night. A spokesman for Mr Zuma said he was unaware of the call.

"The United States has deep concerns that President Aristide's return to Haiti in the closing days of the election could be destabilising," Mr Vietor said. "President Obama reiterated his belief that the Haitian people deserve the chance to choose their government through peaceful, free, and fair elections."

Aides say Mr Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected president, fears the winner might reverse the long-awaited decision to allow his return. In the past, both contenders have been opposed to him. Now, both Michel Martelly and Mirlande Manigat stress his right to return as a Haitian citizen.

Mrs Manigat, a university administrator and former first lady, even said: "President Aristide is welcome to come back and help me with education."

American actor Danny Glover yesterday arrived in South Africa to escort Mr Aristide, his wife, Mildred, and their two daughters home.

Glover, chairman of social justice forum TransAfrica, said: "People of good conscience cannot be idle while a former dictator can return unhindered but a democratic leader who peacefully handed over to another elected president is restricted from returning to his country by external forces," Glover wrote on the forum's website.

Lawyers and law professors criticised US government "interference" in Mr Aristide's "constitutional and human right to return from forced exile to Haiti".

"The United States trying to control when any Haitian citizen - especially a former president - can enter Haiti is outrageous," said Bill Quigley, legal director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights at Loyola New Orleans Law School. He is among more than 100 lawyers who wrote a letter of criticism to the US State Department. "I felt compelled to speak out to defend both President Aristide's human rights and the American tradition of rule of law," he said.

On Monday, US State Department spokesman Mark Toner acknowledged that Mr Aristide had the right to go back to Haiti, but said returning this week "can only be seen as a conscious choice to impact Haiti's elections."

Haiti's electoral council barred Mr Aristide's party, Lavalas, from the presidential election for disputed technical reasons.