MADRID. – Reactions from Dominican sectors to the announced arrival of a U.S. Congressional delegation were quick and furious today, with Foreign Minister  and the Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez disqualifying that country from conducting evaluations of the conditions of labor of Haitian immigrants in the nation’s sugar industry.

Foreign minister Carlos Morales denied accusations regarding the conditions of the Haitian laborers in the sugar mills and cane fields, as some non-government  organizations on have alleged.

"We try at all costs to be just and to act according to the law," said to the Dominican official during the opening of the International Economic and Social Conference for the Development of Haiti, being held here today.

Morales stressed that "in the Dominican Republic the discrimination of the illegal immigrants we are accused of is neither motivated nor caused" and said that this idea "only exists in the feverish minds of those who has made a business our of the supposed defense of human rights," in reference to the ONGs denunciations.

In Santo Domingo, the cardinal Lopez Rodriguez said today that the United States has no morals to send to a group of its congressmen to the country to verify the situation of denounced slavery against Haitian laborers working in Dominican Republic’s vast sugar industry.

The archbishop made reference to an article in the newspaper Listin Diario regarding a numerous delegation of U.S. congressmen, mainly from the Democratic Party, who will come to the country to verify the manual labor situation  in the sugar industry and to discuss the pros and cons of the Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA).

He said that as a Dominican he is the first in recognizing and lamenting the situation that occurs with the Haitians in the country. "What I do not recognize is the moral authority of any North American to be investigating those things in the world," said the cardinal this morning during a workshop for prison chaplains in the National Penitentiary School.

He suggested that the congressmen go to the border U.S.-Mexico to see the situation of the border wall being built, and to go and verify the situation of U.S. troops in Iraq, and other situations of abuses which in his view the United States is responsible for around the world.