US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will begin his first official tour of the Caribbean this week. He will travel to Jamaica, where he will be received by Prime Minister Andrew Holness, and then to Guyana and Suriname, where he will meet with Presidents Mohamed Irfaan Ali and Chandrikapersad Santokhi, respectively.

Rubio's tour comes at a time when CARICOM leaders are increasingly concerned about the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Haiti, which threatens to spread to the region.

During his tour, Rubio will discuss potential solutions to various problems, while keeping an eye on the extreme violence raging in Haiti. During this tour, Rubio may meet in Jamaica with Fritz Alphonse Jean (who has been invited), the new President pro tempore of Haiti's Transitional Council, at a time when there are fears that Port-au-Prince could fall entirely into the hands of armed gangs. This meeting took place in a tense political climate, as Rubio had stated a few days earlier that the Biden administration's era of quiet diplomacy and multilateralism was over. Rubio's approach now favors coercion over cooperation, and Fritz Alphonse Jean may well have to follow American dictates...

HL/ S/ HaitiLibre