PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - France’s national anthem blared across the tarmac on Wednesday as Nicolas Sarkozy made the first visit ever by a French president to Haiti, once his nation’s richest colony — offering aid to a country prostrate after a catastrophic earthquake.

Sarkozy promised $370 million over two years to support Haiti during its reconstruction and announced France’s decision to forgive Haiti of its $76 million in debt.

Moments earlier, Haitian President Rene Preval greeted the French president as a brass band played the Marseillaise to start a quick tour of the earthquake ravaged capital and a French field hospital.

Some Haitians are welcoming France’s new interest in their nation as a counterbalance to the United States, which has sent troops there three times in the past 16 years. But Sarkozy’s visit is also reviving bitter memories of the crippling costs of Haiti’s 1804 independence.

A third of the population was killed in an uprising against exceptionally brutal slavery, an international embargo was imposed to deter slave revolts elsewhere and 90 million pieces of gold were demanded by Paris from the world’s first black republic.

The debt hobbled Haiti, it seemed for life.

A country plagued by natural and unnatural calamities was desperately poor and mismanaged even before a magnitude-7 earthquake smashed up the capital Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12, killing more than 200,000 people and leaving more than a million homeless.

New era for relations?
Haitian politicians this week diplomatically skirted the question of French reparations — a demand put to Paris by ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. That suggests Sarkozy’s four-hour visit could herald a new era.

French officials say Sarkozy will announce details of “a French plan for the reconstruction of Haiti” — if Haitian officials agree. It differs little from proposals from Haitian, U.S. and U.N. officials to decentralize power away from the devastated capital and boost agriculture and tourism.

The trip brings Sarkozy to an island where, French officials acknowledge, fascination with things French duels with strong, lingering resentments.

One official close to the French presidency, briefing reporters in Paris on condition of anonymity, hinted that France is not deaf to calls for reparations, calling Sarkozy’s visit “an occasion to show that France is mobilizing to give Haitians control of their destiny and pay past debts.”

France has already said it was canceling all of Haiti’s 56 million euro ( about $77 million) debt to Paris.

Repaying France for ‘lost property’
In 1825, crippled by the U.S.-led international embargo that was enforced by French warships, Haiti agreed to pay France 150 million francs in compensation for the lost “property” — including slaves — of French plantation owners.

By comparison, France sold the United States its immensely larger Louisiana Territory in 1803 for just 60 million francs. The amount for Haiti was later lowered to 90 million gold francs.

Haiti did not finish paying the debilitating debt — which was swollen by massive interest payments to French and American banks — until 1947.

But Haiti’s wealth already was destroyed. It had been the world’s richest colony, providing half the globe’s sugar and other exports including coffee, cotton, hardwood and indigo that exceeded the value of everything produced in the United States in 1788.

By the early 1780s, half of Haiti’s forests were gone, leading to the devastating erosion and extreme poverty that bedevils the country today.

France’s other former colonies in the region — Guadeloupe, Martinique, St. Martin, St. Barts and Guiana (in South America) — all have voted to remain part of France and send legislators to the French parliament.

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (picture): ENGLISH.PEOPLE, ENJOYFRANCE

WASHINGTON (CNN) — What a long, strange trip Barack Obama’s first full day as president turned out to be.

He began the day pushing for more transparency in government, only to end it by keeping TV cameras out when Chief Justice John Roberts re-administered the oath of the presidency.

All this started at Obama’s historic swearing-in on Tuesday, where Roberts flubbed a line in the oath of office, leading to this comical scene, via transcript at CNN.com:

Roberts: … that I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully …

Obama: … that I will execute …

Roberts: … the off — faithfully the pres — the office of president of the United States.

Obama (at same time) … the office of president of the United States faithfully.

But many legal experts pointed out that Obama became president at noon on Tuesday, regardless of whether the oath was off or not.

So I didn’t think too much of the story until about 7:20 p.m. on Wednesday, when I noticed something odd as I stood in the West Wing of the White House, just a couple hundred feet from the Oval Office.

Suddenly I overheard White House senior adviser David Axelrod say, “Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice, for coming over.”

It’s not very often that I’ve heard a phrase like that, especially one day after the inaugural. So my ears perked up at the possibility that I had bumped into the chief justice and landed a big scoop headlined, “Chief justice visits White House to apologize to president about inaugural snafu.”

I really didn’t even think about the possibility of a second swearing-in. It seemed so implausible. So I started digging around to try to confirm my assumption: that Roberts, mortified over the mix-up, had come over for a quiet and quick apology to the new president.

Instead I had stumbled upon a bigger story. White House officials confirmed to me that new White House Counsel Greg Craig had advised the president to get sworn in a second time, just to nip the issue in the bud and not let any controversy linger that perhaps the president had not been sworn in legitimately.

“And out of an abundance of caution, because there was one word out of sequence, Chief Justice Roberts administered the oath a second time,” Craig said in a prepared statement.

The move allowed one controversy to die, but a new one popped up.

Word started spreading that White House officials had invited just a small group of print journalists in to witness the historic moment a second time, but had failed to invite a representative from the five major U.S. television networks.

CNN and other television networks have complained to the White House but have not gotten a clear answer from White House officials about why the video cameras were locked out.

So the whole point of the ceremony — getting the word out there that the president was in fact inaugurated — was undermined by the fact that now there’s no videotape to prove he was sworn in.

Not to mention that it may run counter to the main message the president was trying to deliver Wednesday with his executive order pushing for more openness in government.

SOURCE: ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT