Above: Haiti Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe and Dominican Minister of the Presidency Gustavo Montalvo earlier this year (Photo: OPDR)

By Alexander Britell

Haiti and the Dominican Republic have postponed their high-level talks for a second time, Caribbean Journal has learned.

The talks, which were originally slated to take place on April 8 in Jacmel, are now scheduled for May 6, according to a source familiar with the talks.

The April 8 meeting was itself a postponement from an originally planned date of March 20.

At the time, Dominican Republic Minister of the Presidency Gustavo Montalvo, who is leading the Dominican delegation in the talks, said both sides had requested that the deadline be extended to “allow time to mature and prepare agreements on trade, health, tourism and migration.”

The migration issue is a major point of discussion for Haiti, following last year’s controversial decision by the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court that could strip hundreds of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent of their citizenship.

Neither side has yet issued an official statement on the postponement.