News Information

• NEWS_POSTED_BY: Haiti Place
• NEWS_POSTED_ON: May 24, 2015
• Views : 681
• Category : Haiti News
• Description : MAY 11, 2015
  
  BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
  jcharles@MiamiHerald.com
  
  Photo: French President Francois Hollande speaks at a Cuba-France business forum in Havana, Cuba, Monday, May 11, 2015. Accompanied by a group of top French business people, Hollande has become the first French president to visit Cuba since it became an independent country, using a one-day trip to build business and diplomatic relations five months after a detente between Havana and Washington. ( | Ismael Francisco AP )
• Location : Port-au-Prince, Ouest, Haiti

Overview

• A day after calling for an end to the U.S. trade embargo during his historic visit to Cuba, French President François Hollande will end a five-day Caribbean tour Tuesday in Haiti, once France’s richest colony.
  
  Hollande’s arrival in Port-au-Prince will mark only the second time that a sitting French president has visited the poverty-stricken nation, which declared its independence from France on Jan. 1, 1804. President Nicolas Sarkozy became the first French leader to make a state visit when he traveled there a month after the cataclysmic Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people.
  
  France and Haiti have shared an uneasy relationship especially after France in 1825 demanded that Haiti compensate former slave holders by paying 150 million gold francs. Known as the “independence debt,” it was later reduced to 90 million gold francs, the equivalent of 17 billion euros or $18.9 billion , which Haiti was still paying in the early 1940s.
  
  Speaking at a slavery memorial on Sunday on the French island of Guadeloupe, Hollande mentioned France’s “debt” but stopped short of agreeing to reparations, dashing hopes but reigniting a thorny debate.
  
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