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U.S. soldiers take cover as a helicopter takes off last week after unloading disaster relief supplies in Port-au-Prince.

AP PHOTO

HAITI’S government is not governing; its very existence has been tenuous since the earthquake struck. Even so, the country should not be turned into a protectorate of the United States or the United Nations.

Haiti’s previous experience under American tutelage is not a good precedent.

Instead, a small, well concentrated committee of the major nations chiefly concerned – the United States, Canada and France, plus the Bahamas to represent the CARICOM regional organization – should be formed to work with what remains of the Haitian government, in order to provide effective emergency governance and give some new strength to this perennial failed state.

Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General of the U.N., has understandably tried to assert that the president of Haiti, Rene Preval, is still in charge; a slender thread of legitimacy, however weak, is certainly worth preserving in a country that has had difficulty with constitutional continuity for most of its history. But Mr. Preval and his cabinet cannot be said to be functioning as a government.

Last week, a French cabinet minister accused the Americans of trying to occupy Haiti, after U.S. air traffic controllers turned away a French airplane bringing aid.

Such collisions are all the more reason for a small group of powers to convene, in order to sort out such problems, along with the Preval government, to provide some equivalent of the state that is now missing and to prevent Haiti from falling back into anarchy.