A recent report on Haiti in the US News and World Report puts on paper several concerns with the expected return to the presidency of Jean Bertrand Aristide. Aristide was ousted by a military coup in 1995 and delivered back in a multimillionaire operation by the United States. When President, he blamed the Dominican Republic for Haiti’s problems. The newsweekly highlights concerns that "drug traffickers are taking over that country – with the help of friends in high places." Extreme poverty contrasts with the mansions built by known drug dealers in Haiti. Unlike the DR, Haiti does not have an extradition agreement with the United States. Referring readers in the DR to the US News and World Report article, Carl Denis writes in El Siglo newspaper: "In Haiti is no secret that Aristide is the leading drug trafficker in the entire island. He has used and abused his power to open the way for large and small drug traffickers." Denis says that drug trafficking has increased 4% to 15% at present with leading politician Jean Bertrand Aristide publicly supporting known drug dealers. The strengthening of the hold of drug dealers in Haiti brings multiple problems for the DR that is used as a link in the Haiti-DR-Puerto Rico connection to the US. Furthermore, drug trafficking has not seemed to help the majority of impoverished Haitians, that increasingly resort to migrate to the DR in desperate search of a way to make a living or of basic services not available to them in their own country. To read the US newsweekly story on drug trafficking in Haiti, see http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/000529/haiti.htm
