Duvalier Talks Of Trial

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31763, 21 August 1968, Page 13

Duvalier Talks Of Trial

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, August 20.

President Francois Duvalier held his first press conference for two years in Port-au-Prince last night, discussing the current Haitian spy trial and his republic’s relations with Britain and the United States.

The 61-year-old small stooped President predicted even more cordial relations between Haiti and Britain after sentence had been given on Mr David Knox, the 48-year-old Bahamas Government Information Director who is on trial for his life before a military tribunal on six counts of spying. The President saluted the American people for having raised work “to the level of nobility, that’s why I like them a great deal,” but he told the United States it needed countries around it to sustain its own position. The 80-minute press conference was given at the gleaming white Presidential palace in an air-conditioned study cluttered with Dr Duvalier’s personal mementos, gifts from friendly statesmen, and a large bunch of roses.

Dr Duvalier proclaimed President for life in 1964 after a Constitutional change, spoke precisely but quietly in the manner of a wise village elder. Behind him were photographs of Emperor Haile Selassie, President Johnson, Chiang Kai-shek, Pope Paul and Dr Martin Luther King. Out of sight on his desk was a brown-handled revolver.

To most questions the President returned philosophical replies as he preached gentle sermons on becoming a leader of men, the need to understand a country in terms of its history, and the view that democracy, to benefit people, must be dynamic. Commenting on his recent reprieve of death sentences on 11 men involved in an abortive invasion of Haiti last May 25, he said: “I hope the evolution you have seen in Haiti will serve as an example to the people who have leadership in the free world.”

On American interference in Haiti’s past history Dr Duvalier said: “I don’t like interference and I would not

perntit any power to intervene in the internal affairs of Haiti.”

Asked for comment on the Knox trial, which is expected to end later this week, the President said: “I don’t know about the trial except from reading the newspapers . . . as head of State the final decision is mine and I hope I have a clear and precise opinion on the case when the high military tribunal sends me documents after the sentence is pronounced.” Relations between the British Empire and Haiti have been cordial for 125 years, he said, and added: “I suppose that tiie Knox case is one of those funny cases. “I suppose that after the sentence has been pronounced in the Knox case relations between Great Britain and Haiti will resume at an even more cordial level,” he said.