The Listín Diario reports that high-ranking US government officers showed an interest in the proposal that the Dominican and Haitian foreign debt be consolidated into a development fund focused on development in Haiti. The proposal was first made five years ago, but given present circumstances in Haiti, it is now being brought up again to the forefront. Lawyer Luis Heredia Bonetti, heading the Dominican delegation to Dominican Week in the USA presented the proposal when meeting with Peter Romero, Deputy Secretary of State for Hemispheric Affairs; Lino Gutiérrez, Deputy Secretary for Mexican and Caribbean Affairs and others at the Department of State. Accompanying the Dominican delegation was Dominican Ambassador Roberto Saladín and US Ambassador in the DR, Charles Manatt. The fund would be managed by public and private sector members from both countries and would promote harmony and cooperation between both countries. The condoned foreign debt would become the Hispaniolan International Fund that would be used for social projects, infrastructure, industrial, agroindustrial, manufacturing, tourism, migration projects, and other harmonious and sustainable projects for the welfare of both countries. The fund is seen as more sustainable than subsidies and international aid, more promissory than the repatriation of Dominican and Haitians, cheaper than new military interventions, and more intelligent and efficient than any international boycott.
