Cobb
Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner Writer
SEVEN MONTHS after a public row over Haiti, United States Ambassador to Jamaica, Sue Cobb, admitted that she apologised back in March to Prime Minister P.J. Patterson for using the word 'unsophisticated' in describing some of the responses that followed the controversial departure into exile of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The ambassador is still insistent, however, that she did not apply the adjective to the Prime Minister's response, but rather to sections of the media.
ARISTIDE'S UNEXPECTED DEPARTURE
Following President Aristide's unexpected departure from Haiti on February 29, in the face of a growing insurgency, Prime Minister P.J Patterson, in his capacity as CARICOM chairman, spoke out in unusually sharp terms about the situation on March 3, and raised questions about the role of the U.S. Govern-ment in the matter.
It was in defence of her Government that Ambassador Cobb, in a statement in the press on March 7, said that Mr. Aristide's claims of having been kidnapped by U.S. forces had been "heard by willing ears, resulting in surprisingly inflammatory rhetoric and an environment of hostility that I can only call markedly disappointing and unsophisticated in analysis."
The following day she met at Jamaica House with Prime Minister Patterson, after which, the tension between the two sides eased somewhat.
President Aristide subsequently spent more than two months in Jamaica before moving on to South Africa where he continues to live in exile.
Reflecting on that diplomatic spat seven months ago, Ambassador Cobb, in an interview with The Sunday Gleaner, attributed the difficulties that arose to 'a little bit of a communication gap'.
She had apologised to Prime Minister Patterson, she revealed, for using the offending word, 'because the press and people took it as meaning that I was saying that the Prime Minister was unsophisticated'.
But that, she insisted, was far from the truth. Instead, she said that she was saying that "The reactions of the media, particularly in the United States and among certain persons, was unsophisticated no analysis, no knowledge of what was happening."
Nevertheless, she said, she regretted the use of the word, even as she continues to hold to the view that her country acted properly in respect of President Aristide's departure from Haiti.
