Just a few days before taking office for a second term as Haiti's president, Mr Jean-Bertrand Aristide has met opposition leaders in an effort to defuse a political crisis over flawed elections in the impoverished Caribbean nation.
The meeting, the first time in several years that Mr Aristide has met opposition figures publicly, was held on Saturday at the Vatican's embassy in Haiti and marked a step toward dialogue that has been urged by the US and other nations.
Mr Aristide, who is due to be sworn in for a second term on Wednesday, is a fiery former Catholic priest who became Haiti's first democratically elected leader in 1991.
He was ousted just seven months into his term but restored to power three years later in a US-led invasion. He was constitutionally barred from running for a second consecutive term in 1996 but won a presidential vote in November that was marred by an opposition boycott and shunned by international observers.
Opposition leaders were angry over parliamentary elections last year that gave Mr Aristide's ruling Family Lavalas party a sweeping victory in Haiti, a country of 7.8 million people that is the poorest in the Americas.
Saturday's meeting followed an eight-point agreement with the Clinton administration last December to seek a resolution to the crisis, which included a pledge to include opposition members in his government.
Mr Aristide met the leaders of opposition alliance, Democratic Convergence, for talks but one observer said nothing decisive had yet emerged.
The meeting "was more procedural than anything", said Mr Pierre-Emile Rouzier, spokesman for the Civil Society Initiative, a group of business and religious leaders that banded together last month to mediate a solution.
Mr Rouzier said Saturday's meeting would be followed by more talks between Lavalas and opposition representatives.
Mr Aristide had no comment on the Saturday meeting, but Mr Rouzier said he had stressed the need for an accord. "If Arabs and Jews can try to make peace in the Middle East, why not among us Haitians?" Mr Aristide was quoted as saying.
Mr Brian Dean Curran, the newly appointed US ambassador in Haiti, said the meeting on Saturday was "very positive - it's a good start".
Mr Aristide will take over this week from his protege and ally, President Rene Preval. Mr Aristide's return to power in Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, starts on a difficult note because of the election disputes. This latest crisis erupted last year after officials refused to review the allegedly tainted calculation of election results that gave Family Lavalas an overwhelming majority in the legislature. Analysts said that Lavalas probably would have won no matter how the vote was calculated but by a smaller margin.
The dispute prompted the main opposition parties to pull out of the 2000 presidential vote and to plan a "parallel government" to counter Mr Aristide's.
The bottom line for Haiti in resolving its political dispute is financial. Pending an effort to smooth over the crisis, donor nations have held up hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to a country where unemployment is about 80 per cent and where a recent UN study found some 62 per cent of the population is malnourished.