Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon will use the State of the Nation debate in February to demand to know the full costs of President Thabo Mbeki's visit to Haiti and what benefits it will have brought to South Africa.

In a statement released yesterday, Leon accused Mbeki of "propping up yet another international outcast - and in the process misusing millions of taxpayers' rands" and described Haiti's President Jean-Bertrand Aristide as "the Mugabe of the Caribbean".

"The facts about Aristide's Haiti are freely available to anyone with a computer or access to a library," said Leon.

"They must surely have been available to President Mbeki before he set off on his journey to infamy in the Caribbean.

"Reputable research and human rights activists of note record the country, which Mbeki has chosen to align us with and to celebrate with its regime, as having one of the worst human rights records in the hemisphere".

Leon described Haiti as "a state that has come increasingly to resemble a 'narco-state', pushing drugs into the US, headed by an authoritarian president who presides over a ruling party, the Lavalas, which has been complicit in attacks on journalists and human rights workers; the corruption of the police and the judiciary and the transformation of gangs of armed thugs into a semi-official arm of the government".

"Aristide's period in power has failed to improve the lot of the Haitian people, especially the poor black majority, even marginally".

Leon said the New Year had begun for Mbeki as the old year ended for him: with a foreign policy fiasco all of his own making.

"Once again he has placed South Africa very firmly on the wrong side of the international street - on the side of would-be dictators and human rights abusers".

Leon added that apart from the injection of the South African taxpayer, there was an almost total aid embargo on Haiti, except for emergency humanitarian relief. This was a consequence of gross electoral fraud by Aristide's party his government and its increasingly authoritarian behaviour, which has been condemned by the international community.

"Haiti has been suspended from all IMF, World Bank and other direct aid". – Sapa.