# 3 Haiti: Madrid Meeting Rejects “Humanitarian Alibi” http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/

On May 16 European and Latin American social movements meeting in Madrid adopted a statement denouncing the US and European response to a devastating Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti as “the utilization of the humanitarian alibi with the sole goal of defending US geopolitical, economic and military interests, with the complicity of the European Union (EU).” The groups were meeting in the Fourth Assembly of Enlazando Alternativas (EA4, “Linking Alternatives”),

held May 14-18 on the eve of a May 18 trade summit of EU and Latin American and Caribbean leaders in the Spanish capital. Haiti, which signed an economic partnership agreement with the EU in 2009, was expected to attend the summit.

The social movements’ statement called for respect for Haitian sovereignty; a three to five year moratorium on economic agreements signed by Haiti in the past; an end to the conditions traditionally imposed by the international financial institutions; an end to the use of military force as a response to the crisis; the “immediate, total, unconditional and real cancellation of the external debt”; and normalization of the status of all undocumented Haitian immigrants in the EU and the US.